Posts made by Derp

Metis

Catfish

Hate it, for a variety of reasons.

First of all, I don't like the 'something for nothing' style merits. The first dot of PT, for instance, gives you two dots of contacts. Essentially, you buy your first Contact and then get another dot free. Dislike.

Second, the way that the /9 and /rote stuff work make this almost essential for physical types, and while it gives it to mental and social stuff too, mental and social things are still treated as anathema in MU's when they can effectively determine how another character should behave. So until we fix that problem, this gives even more power to physical types.

This merit is written in such a way that it makes it almost impossible to justify not buying. It's way too good as written, and I see nothing in it (save for the dice tricks and beat-gains when you buy an asset skill) that you couldn't get by spending xp normally.

Until we can make it so that this thing is as good for mental/social builds as it is for physical builds, at least as far as the dice tricks go (and no matter what you do with that, it's gonna piss off a lot of people), it shouldn't be in play.

@Lotherio said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

nversely longevity again ... After a year or two of dinosaur bloat, new players don't want to join. Or join then complain because it's the same dinos with all the power that affect the game.

See, I ... kind of don't think that this is necessarily a valid counterpoint.

Maybe John the New Guy, Perennial Loner can't do things around the oldbies.

But John the New Guy, Tina the Couple Monther, and their friends Tim, Jerry, and Fred could all get together and figure out a way to make changes to their environment by consolidating their specific stuff. A coalition of people can accomplish between them more than what any one oldbie can do. And if they have such a problem with the Way Things Are that they think it needs to change, then they can surely find Like-Minded Folk out there to help them achieve it. (Or if they can't, it might be best that they aren't able to enforce their specific vision of changes).

Gee. What a shame that would be. Players having to work together to get stuff done, instead of Going it Alone Forever. Those dinobots are a problem, man.

@Arkandel said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

Make damn sure to let your newbies be able to catch up. It doesn't need to (and shouldn't) happen too fast; let them work for it since otherwise it invalidates your oldbies' efforts, but make it possible.

See, this is the part that I'm getting hung up on in most of our systems that currently exist. You either start off as Pretty Damn Powerful, or you know you'll get Pretty Damn Powerful within X amount of time just because of the way the system is coded, and I see two problems with it:

• First, catchup xp means that players have to put basically no effort into what they're doing (see my frequent bitching about secrets of the universe getting absorbed through the starbucks wifi while you shop for boots on amazon). The ones who are really active will pull the train for the entire game, and they're almost guaranteed to not be that far ahead of anyone else when this happens. At a certain level of xp, even the coded leg-up they have becomes trivial.

• Second, players under these systems get pretty damn entitled real fast. It's easy to talk a lot of shit about the people at the upper end of the tier because you know that in a few weeks you'll be right there with them xp-wise, so why should anyone ever show any respect for the people who have been around for a good chunk of time and put in some real work to make things happen?

While I'm all for characters catching up, so to speak, I think that you should also get equal 'pay' for equal 'work', up to a point. I'm cool with diminishing returns, but I don't want a system where John the New Guy can come in and know that with half the work that Prince Whatsit did, he can get the xp that Prince Whatsit -has-. Many people might not like that idea, but ... that's the one I like. And if I start my own game, it'll probably end up a lot like that.

Other people can use catchup systems all they want to, my personally? If you wanna catch up to the old guys in half the time it took them to get there, you'd better be ready to get your hands dirty.

@skew said in Suppressing "has left" in TinyMUX:

Could you give a little more detail on what you're trying to accomplish?

You want players to be able to enter/leave multiple rooms without other players knowing?

Hex is wanting to suppress the double message stuff you get when people come in.

Derp walks in through the side door.
Derp has arrived.

Derp walks out onto the patio.
Derp has left.

That 'has arrived' and 'has left' stuff is superfluous, is what they're saying, and they want to find a way to suppress that default message there.

So, we've had a lot of talk about 'how to make MU's better' lately, and every time it comes up I can't help but think "Better for whom?"

See, while I agree with @Arkandel

game which mismanages the amount of progress you make for time unit can render progress irrelevant; if XPs fall from the skies like raindrops and everyone's special no one is. If progress is too slow and everyone wallows in the dirt then it doesn't matter. If progress is behind a wall your playstyle doesn't support (must play too many hours, run PrPs to justify expenditures, etc) then it might as well not exist. Etc.

and @Seraphim73's list above of what advancement constitutes, I also have to think ... some of these things are mutually incompatible. For instance, @Jim-Nanban wants things that he can fondle and do and whatever, but even he admits that certain playstyles lead to Charzilla. But then you also have it at the opposite end of the spectrum, where everyone is charzilla, so no one is, or everyone is a lowly peon, so nobody feels like they have any agency.

Now, I for one am not opposed to Charzillas, especially in the WoD games. Those Charzillas are the ones who typically end up as Prince or Primogen or Hierarch or Queen or <Manson>Stick your stupid slogan in.</Manson>. Are some of them terrible? Sure. But so are some of the ones in the fiction for the setting, so that's not out of the ordinary. I think that some healthy amount of Hierarchy is needed in these games that doesn't exist in many of them, currently. Everyone wants to do catchups and just-for-being-approved xp, and all I've ever seen it lead to is stagnation.

I think that, ultimately, rather than fixate on some medium between all of them, we should really just stick to one, and encourage others to make something else if it doesn't suit people's playstyles. While it might suck to feel that one game that your friends are having fun on doesn't work for you because it requires different hours or the RP is behind a wall you can't get over, it's probably important to keep in mind that not everyone can play in the same sandbox, either. Sometimes, you just need more diversity, and less amalgamation.

Well for me, I know that I enjoy it when advancement (in skills, or stats, or positions, or whatever) have to be worked for. I enjoy starting off low and working my way up. I enjoy things like having to provide justifications for xp spends, etc. It makes me feel that my character has grown, and that I have truly accomplished something.

Many games now seem to give you fast xp for basically nothing and allow you to spend it on whatever, which certainly has a place for certain things. But it kind of bugs me that people end up at Supreme Power Levels because they sat around absorbing the power of the universe through starbucks wifi.

Especially on WoD, there are plenty of games that do fast and easy xp. It'd be nice to have a few games where you still have to work for it at least a little, like HM. The Long Game stuff can be really fun for some of us.

@HelloProject said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

book

What book?

Fate's Harvest likewise offers psychics, thaumaturges, and Changelings, though it's using a mix of 1.0 and 2.0 rules. Might be something to consider if you want something a bit different.

http://fatesharvest.com/w/Main_Page

While I don't really wanna staff there (<3 you but already staff on another game and that is work enough) I can probably help as a Mage advisor, since you seem to be wanting one of those. What are you looking at doing here?

Yeah, Changeling does get an inordinate amount of weird protectionism just about everywhere it is offered. Mage as a system is fine, but mage players tend to do dumb shit with the systems, and there are very few ways to cracks down on that in most places that it is offered. Demon I like but jesus does it not play well with others.

As an exclusive WOD mu person, I can'try really comment on the other systems.

But Fate's Harvest is looking pretty promising, if you want a changeling game.

So, forgive me if this is one of those 'common knowledge' type deals. I only played there for a very, very short time (less than two weeks, if I remember right). But I have a two-part question.

1. Does anyone know if the code there was ever made publicly available, via something like Github?

2. If it was never made publicly available, does anyone know who to contract to try and snag a couple of things from it, possibly?

I remember liking a couple of the systems that it used, and would like to try and find the code/documentation for them, but I'm not sure where to start looking, or who to ask for them. If anyone knows how to contact the sexton of that particular digital graveyard, or knows where the headstones are, I would be greatly appreciative!

Edited: Because posting at 8am after working all night makes me repeat stuff apparently.

@Ghost said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@Thenomain NO, YOU CAN KEEP YOUR +1.

As far as that other thread goes, I don't have an actual complaint per se, but was more tying in that experience into the greater topic at hand. I read back through it a few days ago because someone +1'd a post of mine after 5+ months, and at some point every now and then someone posts something like: Well, I'm not going to post an apology for something NOW, seeing how people are dogpiling on people trying to follow the spirit of the thread"

I think some of the more constructive threads follow this format:

• Constructive topic! Let's be constructive.
• Someone posts in spirit of topic
• Someone corrects poster
• Poster retorts
• Dogpile begins
• Ten posts arguing semantics
• People shy away from posting about constructive topic
• Personal attacks
• What were we talking about again?
• Attempt to re-rail topic happens
• Someone corrects poster
• Poster retorts
• Dogpile begins
• Ten posts arguing semantics
• People shy away from posting about constructive topic
• Personal attacks
• What were we talking about again?
• Attempt to re-rail topic happens
• Repeat...

Weird. It's almost as if a group of humans with differing opinions are trying to find a happy median on a topic they are passionate about.

No, really. This is pretty much any sort of basic group behavior when there are ideological factions in competition. Some pretty good chunks of psychology, sociology, and political science are devoted to studying this.

This is not an error; this is how our neurological coding works. You see it in literally every heterogenous group.

@surreality re: Tinkering

I know that this probably isn't as constructive as it could be, but I'll throw my two cents in here.

I think that part of our problem, as a culture, is that we're convinced that there is some One True Right and Only Way to do things. We design our games around this idea. We build our community around this idea. But at the end of the day -- there are too many people here for any one thing to be right for all of them. We're not one community. We're several different communities that share a common thread, but one that's nebulous enough that it cannot be solidified into any one solid thing. It's online RPG, sure, but that's about where the commonalities end.

Some of us like WoD. Some of us like D20. Some of us like Lords and Ladies or homebrew or games based on different kinds of fantasy fandoms.

And that is not a singular community. That is a creole of different beliefs, cultures, etc, and we come here because we can use a sort of lingua franca to try and reach out to each other. And in doing so, we try and compare notes and such, but at this point, I think that we can safely agree on; there is no one way. The best way is the one that makes the game run like the game-runners want the game to run, and players will either enjoy that way, or they won't.

Places like this help to solidify ideas, but I don't think it's fair to use it as some sort of lab to try and create the very best thing for everyone. Everyone is different. There will always be differences of opinion, people who would be happier if things were different (and people who are happiest with things just the way they are). At best, this place gives us an outlet so that we can say 'this would be better if...' and see how many people agree with that sentiment, which can be the impetus for other games where things run differently.

From what I understand, we used to have a great deal many more places available. Now there aren't so many. We've got people like Theno out there making it easier for people to start things within specific genres, especially with his various WoD stats systems, but at the end of the day, it's still costly and time-consuming. And with that, there should be... I dunno. A certain amount of leeway given to game-runners that we don't often see in places like this, because they're not doing things A Certain Way.

Given that ... perhaps it's time we tried to figure out how to make it easier for the folks to make their own games when they dissent with the way certain ones are run (despite all the arguments against GOMO foo, it's still the best option for getting more options). I think that we could figure out a way, as a hobby, to make it cheaper, easier, and overall more efficient, rather than trying to find the One Gameplan to Rule Them All.

MSB is not the place where most shit-talking and cliquish hate happen.

That's Skype and Discord.

Every post made here is public, rather than private. And there is a reasonable chance that if it'still full of BS, it will backfire. Like, a lot.

@HelloProject said in Computer Science:

@Derp I'd be interested in knowing more about this 0_o. What is it and how does it help?

It's where you take a statement and substitute in a mathematical formula for it, which allows you to do geometry-esque proofs on it to make sure that it actually does what you think it does. It does a lot of the same stuff as boolean logic (if, and, not, or, etc), but comes at it from a slightly more approachable (and I feel, more widely applicable) way. For most people, it helps with reasoning and such, but really learning any form of standardized logic will help you immensely with understanding how computer stuff works, as they're essentially just logic machines.

@Arkandel said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

some extrapolate wildly from a tiny sample ("this will never work because six years ago someone tried something vaguely similar and it didn't pan out" but the rule isn't that we get the pitchforks out.

I mean, really, this isn't even limited to MSB. This is just a part of MU culture, from everything I've seen. Someone tried a thing, it didn't work (for whatever reason -- maybe the players went crazy, maybe staff implemented it badly, maybe it didn't scale well, maybe it didn't fit the theme... the list goes on and on, here), and forevermore people are gunshy of that thing, and will often bring up this one example of this one time that it didn't work on one game as a reason it should not be implemented on this-or-any-other game. I don't think it's entirely fair to lay that at the feet of MSB, when it tends to happen within MU's themselves just as frequently. If not more so. So yeah, I agree with your sentiment here.

@Monogram said in Mass Effect: Andromeda: The Thread:

Too busy running around with this insane build of Turbocharge + Charge + Tactical Cloak and a shotgun. I plan on playing my next playthrough on Insanity because right now, it's just unfair.

I'm doing overload + charge + shotgun with all the 'restore shield' powers and reduced charge cooldowns. It's basically unkillable.

I would say rather than strictly math, you'd be pretty well-served by learning symbolic logic. I know it helped me immensely.