Posts made by D-bone

A good analogy is something like this:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2zTrMf4eH4
TLDR- Player gets invited to game he doesn't understand. He commits some errors in thegame which requires a high level of understanding (both in terms of culture and mechanics) and is killed in the first session by another player. (L5R) They even use that same level of fucked up justification that is being used by the people on this thread to justify smacking down new players.

Amusingly Armageddon is almost exactly the same in every aspect for newbies. By the defenders own admission the theme can't bend even slightly to put up with new players, you just kill them and punish them instead. If there was open ooc communication on game, this might be somewhat fixable with ooc informing new players to be more careful in their interactions... The current round about system relies on the player popping onto a discord- a system of communication outside of the game- and requires a player not to still share ooc information. So if the noble is pissed off at you, its considered not acceptable to say to them, hey oocly, what'll get me out of this alive and not beaten up, I'm new here and don't know what to do? That shit is highly discouraged, and depending on how the question is phrased.. against the rules, which we all know new players will know how to exactly turn the question into a legal one.

but nope, opaque system with poor communication somehow thinks its justified to have a intense culture of punishment for those who step out of line. This is in a game with perma-death. If they are lucky to survive, they soon suffer a deprived existence due to poor communication from staff and the community on how they can come back. Yurp, nothing fucked up with that at all. You know whats great? Being punished for ignorance, and then told that their ignorance is all their own fault, and they suffer the consequence... in an environment they are more or less naive about.

Also I'm not an old crochty player, I'm one of those new players.. who did thorough research of the setting. I bought the core book, and everything. Yet I still got fucking shat on because I didn't know which player was which and didn't know to avoid walking into a certain noble. (Again a Karma/Approval required role.) And even after being fucked over, was still willing to play until I got stone walled by staff who refused to help me figure out how to fix my shitty situation. I didn't ask for hand outs, but basic information. Why would any new player play a shitty game like that? Ever?

Consented to being beaten up. Not the urination which happened the instance I was 'awoken' and not given a.. hey you into piss play too btw? Which again.. the robbery happened in the middle of town, by a noble, so.. yak now.

As for the fact that there are currently two new staffers there a that are nice.. thats great. The problem remains- Armageddon has historically and consistently had a transparency problem- and as new staffers are hired- the next Nyx will no doubt ingratiate himself. Thre have been eras of good staffing on Arma before, the game is over a decade old after all, but becuase the games staff culture is opaque, players won't know when they are transitioning to the next round of tyranny until it literally is sitting on top of them, and they can't get their petitions approved etc.

Oh and I suppose I should put this out there, looking for a coder yah?

The RPI system definitely has merits, but I am still skeptical about the culture of this RPI game, even though the most dangerous staffer has been removed from their position.. I wonder about the lack of transparency that is conducive towards a healthy game environment.

I basically quit the gae after one day of play because staff refused to answer a basic question that my character would icly know- after I intoned that my character basically had been robbed of all his newbie money. Oh and then got urinated on, and beaten up. Even after doing everything correctly, hey I rolled with those punches but to then get stonewalled by staff so I couldn't get back on my feet..

wewt. TLDR: If you are looking for a blast for the past in MUSH staffing policies, give Arma (and many an rpi) a try. All the systems are intentionally opaque and staff secrecy, spying and cliquishness is not only allowed, but often approved!.

For those interested- atm things have stalled, probably going to have to restart from square one. Sorry.

Send a message if you want to keep working on this project, but I need to find a team with dedication to work with. All that fun shit.

Anyway, sorry for the general bad news- D-bone.

To be fair, I was already in VG's shit list, didn't really care. My goal was to protect the player base after all. From my reputation, I'm also a fucking psychopath too, to some extent, but at least I have some level of introspection.

Point is, if anyone needs help running a fallout game, I can do shit. Uh.. yah.

El Dorado. She for some reason begged me to come back to El Dorado two or so weeks ago. (Radlobster I suspect ran interference for me but now I'm not so sure.)

Becuase I consistently stood up to her and tried to encourage players to come to ME with questions and problems instead of asking them on public becuase they risked getting harassed. I asked questions that other staff members had but were too afraid to ask, etc. and then tried to get all the staff to support me in a coup attempt on her becuase I found her constant harrasment ruining the game.

As a fabeled and stupid Gorilla, I'll help run shit. I guess, and help with theme.. blah blah.

I maintain that I was totally going to win that until my luck ran out.

Was totally in first place too until the fuckin duel.

Whatever Tempest. I beat a unicorn rider in the topaz championship without a single rank in riding skill in the riding competition.

And out wrestled a dragon without a rank in hand to hand.

God that was the funniest shit ever in that game. The horses though, my god.

Minus .5 honor! Challenge them to a duel! Silly man. I've managed to locate a player or too besides myself who played pretty consistently the old l5r game.

I'm sure they;d want to start playing again, and same here.

The Faithful Executioner: Life and Death, Honor and Shame in the Turbulent Sixteenth Century

A Scholarly book that is quite interested in examining society, crim and punishment of 16th century Germany through the lens of a dishonored class- an executioner.

Also the only book where I've read that someone used a dog as a murder weapon. Let me be clear here, the person did not sick a dog on someone and that killed them. The murder weapon... was the dog. Hilariously enough this is very important for the focus of the text as this comes back to haunt his family because his family is tainted with 'death' and ends up condemning him to a life of being in the executioners guild.

The book is full of black humor sorts of anecdotes too. And uh.. terrible criminals and crimes, so you know.. be prepared for that, but for a factual book, quite good.

It was Mr. Jones, outside the farm house, with the dog.

If you want to feel bad and want to kill yourself, Lost Girls: Sex and Death in Renaissance Florence tugs at the heartstrings really, really badly. Such a downer of a book, but also entrancing in it's own, horrifying way.

What do the people of Florence, Italy do with the most unwanted sorts of people; Orphan girls? This book examines the 'future' that these young women have to look forward to, and ultimately examines how just hopelessly fucked these poor girls were. And these girls were the lucky ones that were able to get accepted into an orphanage.

The amazon review does have a few misleading lines in it, especially at the end of the second paragraph, but the worst part is, it's more sort of accurate in a way-oh man, this is so depressing.

But if you know a red pill, throw them this text.

Why not just steal the honor system from 5e whole cloth then? Or at least the morality code. I do hesitate to use it without some edits of course, but.. that plus 4e code seems workable.

Is there a reason why this can't be 4e for the time being? Considering the book is only in beta, and large amounts of content and plot details are going to be different or changed.. I can't see the benefits of doing the 5e version over 4e, at this point in time.

Maybe when the book officially comes out, but even then.. a few expansion books would be needed imo to really flesh everything out.

Adapting a 4e character to 5e appears much easier on the surface then I give it credit for. Choose high or low stats (or averages) to make the rings, skills transfer over.. etc.

@Jennkryst What I'm getting at with Honor and Glory and Status in is that the way it was originally designed in 4e made fluctuations not really effect day to day mechanics so much. It is theoretically possible, and maybe even probable in a given session to have 3-4 things effect a players honor or glory rankings.

In 4e, at the end of the day, or in the middle of the session you'd recalculate honor totals, and just be done with it.

Here, if you advance or lower, you gain or lose perks in the middle of a session.
Do you gain the same perks? Can you choose which perks you lose? What if you lose honor and then immediately regain some of it, can you choose which of the two perks you want back and gain them in a different order than you lost them?

The rating system where you had like honor 1-10ish and then sort of the kept track of seperate honor ranks to determine leveling up or down your honor allowed players some freedom in behaving witout worrying over losing their mechanical benefits.

The goal of the game again seems narrative focus over mechanics. The core themes are Duty, honor, Bushido vs the ID/Self-interest- and basically the game punishes players immediately for doing the ID stuff. Which thematically makes sense, but mechanically adds more paperwork... to a game which again the stated purpose on the surface supposedly is making a mechanically simpler game.

Another big problem is that Honor always did kind of exist in this nebelous place where it is both alignment but also sort of social perceptions of your status/alignment. Glory used to be the equivilant of Street Cred in shadowrun, or renown like equivlants in other games.

Now Glory is public honor + street cred.. which makes absolutley no sense, while honor is personal alignment. As a Scorpion player, this is inherently problematic given that Scorpions give a middle finger to honor in private and honor is now personal alignment instead of public so now all scorpion players are just straight up evil in this alignment system unless they basically do nothing except their duty 24/7. Enjoy being constantly with 1-2 perk penalties for roleplaying your character correctly.

I knew it, fantasy flight was going to use some proprietary dice shit. Hate that so much.

Also on a methdological level- the goals of the game seem to contradict one another.

Honor, Glory, Status etc is no longer a set of ranks out of ten, but now out of 100, with accompanying flaws/perks. So more complicated. Everything else because of the new dice system appears incredibly simplified.

Also ranking up your school, (which in 4th edition you just did by spending xp in general if I recall correctly) requires you to spend xp only on your school (aka class) related abilities only. No ore Courtiers taking kenjutsu to level up. I already see this having to be changed.

So for examlple.. take the Hida Defender- a Bushi warrior class. Look at what ranks you are and are not allowed to take certain skills to level up. Develop a strategy now to game the system to level up as a fast as possible while also making the most hyper optimized character while still leveling up. For example, level up Martial skills as much as possible in first and second ranks, because you can't for some reason level them up in 3rd or 4th. Dump stat skills like Command, Tactics, meditation and Theology becuase taking them in cgen doesn't count towards leveling up, so you can buy them on the cheap to help kick you over the edge to level up.

Why is this a game that is about narrative focus with one of the most obviously abusable level up designs I've ever seen that also clearly destroys character variety. No more Samurai with deception or persuasion skills, becuase lul fuck you. This system also is meant to replace the system where-in every school gets a set of unique abilities. Instead of getting 5 abilities, you get one. (which in turn explains why characters can only level up certain ways- because all the classes are the same practically)

On a semi-related note and because I can't be bothered to start a new thread.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1i49Uj1h_i2zaLwd-PXClzFne9EV5WH9mJKxCGN3pEm4/viewform?edit_requested=true

They might also be publishing the beta rules somewhere else if you don't want to do some annoying sign up thing too. Probably easy to get. Time to see where FF takes 5th edition I guess.

As one of the folks who played consistently at l5r mush, I'd be happy to see something using that system, even if it is this 7th sea thig and all that fun jazz.

The bodyguard from King Foltest also came with titles, wealth and money. The only reason Geralt lost all that is part of the plot of the Witcher 2. Pretty sure Geralt got made into a knight then a duke in the introduction of that game.

The goal of this thread is theme- not mechanics. I have stated multiple times- not interested in witchers in a game due to multiple reasons. If you want to open your own witcher game, great. Go for it. Doesn't help me in the slightest though, especially suggestions of mechanics and systems to use.

As I stated before- if you want to talk about trying to build a theme or a world of a game that feels like the witcher without being the witcher- that is helpful to me. If not, I'm glad your interested in that, but it sounds like you should go make your own game, and code these systems in yourself. Seems like you really dig them.