Posts made by Derp

@Coin

Oh, I'm aware. That doesn't change the fact that it's -a- solution to the problem that this thread is supposed to be discussing, even if some people don't like it. It's paradoxical. I just don't get it. 'We need a thing that can't just be ignored and gives game benefits, and there is a thing, but that thing sucks and we hate it because even negotiation doesn't allow enough gray area and wiggle room'.

There exists a system already, for one of the games. Use the thing that is there. What is this other mythical epic system that lets things be both ignored and not ignored?

@lordbelh said:

@Derp said:

Except that in this case, it's actually you that's wrong, since you have a limited number of rolls in which to try and get to your goal. You can't keep going about it indefinitely. It, like any other extended action, has a cap, a maximum number of rolls before the goal you wish to reach becomes impossible. If you're close, you can retry, though.

Another important point is that, again, the Core GMC book does not exclude the system being used on PC's, and in general, if you're at a tabletop game, it can be assumed that most of the time you are part of a team with said PC's and working toward the same, or at least similar, goals over a much shorter term than a MUSH. The only real difference between NPCs and PCs on a Mush is how often they appear on the screen, and who ends up controlling them.

No, it doesn't say you can't use it, it just says you shouldn't.

When the target amount of Doors are so low (which can in turn just be augmented by merits to be even more negligible) , I stand by my statement that it's just a matter of time and effort. If you want to succeed you will succeed.

They can fluctuate, too, and even be assigned according to inherent difficulty. I see your point, sort of, but I think you're missing the forest for the trees, and are just looking for a reason to dislike a system you've decided you don't like.

Which I'll admit, I kind of find weird. We have all these discussions about how we need a system to represent clout and influence and ability to get things done that can't get ignored, and then people bitch that the system built into at least one of the games is too hard to ignore and they can't just arbitrarily decide to do whatever they wanna.

If the ideal system is one in which people can't ignore your stuff, but you can ignore all their stuff, then there is no such system that can be.

@lordbelh said:

While it is possible to do what @Coin says and just counter-play with equal aggression, in which case two opposite social actions are running forward that may or may not be mutually exclusive, the fact is that the Doors system is based around PCs working on NPCs with the ST setting the limits for what can be done. Apply it to PVP situations and the whole game is rigged in favor of the aggressor. The aggressor will always win eventually, and the only thing that's in doubt is how long it will take and how many resources you're willing to expend to get there. Which makes it rubbish both for cooperative RP and for PVP. Its basically rubbish. They even warn against using it vs PCs in the damn book.

I remember the last time we all had this discussion. @Derp was wrong then, too.

Except that in this case, it's actually you that's wrong, since you have a limited number of rolls in which to try and get to your goal. You can't keep going about it indefinitely. It, like any other extended action, has a cap, a maximum number of rolls before the goal you wish to reach becomes impossible. If you're close, you can retry, though.

Another important point is that, again, the Core GMC book does not exclude the system being used on PC's, and in general, if you're at a tabletop game, it can be assumed that most of the time you are part of a team with said PC's and working toward the same, or at least similar, goals over a much shorter term than a MUSH. The only real difference between NPCs and PCs on a Mush is how often they appear on the screen, and who ends up controlling them.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

Besides, from what I can tell, it would take someone with low social stats and/or horrible luck rolling to actually -lose- a social contest. Much like with nwod physical combat, it seems weighted on the side of the 'attacker' with the 'defender' simply sitting there being worn down by a barrage of verbal assaults until they either give in completely or do the offer an alternative thing. I have yet to see anything set in the rules for the target to actually fight back, verbally speaking.

Lots of people think this, and I'm really not sure where it comes from. Rolls can be contested, and you still have a limited number of rolls, etc, and modifiers for things can still be assigned.

Aside from that, you of course have the option of trying to convince the other person to do something at the same time. The 'Defender' isn't a passive actor. They're only a defender against a specific roll. They can just as easily be the 'attacker' on the next roll, and if leverage and such are used creatively, you can even have one person capable of making quicker rolls, or having fewer doors than the other, etc. It's chess, not darts.

@Ganymede said:

@Derp said:

I agree that it's not a bad system. The problem with it is that it requires an audience. It's a political debate between two people wherein there are spectators involved, which works great for things like Elysium, but not so great when you just need to convince a person to do a thing and there aren't a hundred people around to witness it. Doors, on the other hand, work in both situations, which makes them slightly better, IMO.

Yeah, but the Impression limitation makes it so engh for a MU*.

I generally stick to the old "Roll Manipulation + Persuasion" method, myself.

Yeah, that's why I suggested the change to Impression. Currently, Hostile works like what @Miss-Demeanor says, which is pretty lame when you have a whole spectrum of 'friendly' impressions but only one 'unfriendly' impression, and anything below neutral prevents rolling. You should be able to convince more than just your friends to do things, and while leverage has its place, it's a limited system. It's why I would include Uneasy and Unfriendly, and have Hostile be just for when there is actual violence or some other real, tangible harm going down, since at that point all negotiation has failed.

@Pyrephox said:

Like, there should definitely be events tied to and benefits for having a low or negative rep, to make it fun for those players to play that, and give some compensation for not having the bennies of high status and rep. Whether it's having targeted RP where enemy factions try to recruit you, or events where there's a Status ceiling of people allowed to join (the police commissioner should not be investigating the gritty street crime), or high risk/high reward plots that require a bit of "plausible deniability".

You know, I kind of like that 'status ceiling' idea. That ain't bad. There should be some bennies to offset that, too. The commissioner should be able to change the rules, give out perks or hits to things, etc. But that could really be a workable system.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

And the first time someone wants me to sit around for two hours while they figure out if their PC can sway mine? My reaction is this. And since we're on the subject... hostile is a lot more than 'I will punch you if you speak to me'. There's plenty of hostile people in the world that never lift a hand towards a person. So no, I don't think Hostile is JUST meant to cover 'ready to inflict physical violence'.

And that reaction is part of the reason that conversations like this get sparked in the first place. People are unhappy with people ignoring the fact that a mechanical / sheet trait has effectively no impact, largely for examples like the above. Be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.

@Ganymede said:

The Danse Macabre's social combat system, in my opinion, was a better approach; it's quick, it's dirty, and it's about who looks better in the end, ultimately. It's not about making someone suck your dick as much as it is convincing everyone else around that the eschewing of your penis makes that person looks totes ridic. That's kind of better for PvP conflict.

I agree that it's not a bad system. The problem with it is that it requires an audience. It's a political debate between two people wherein there are spectators involved, which works great for things like Elysium, but not so great when you just need to convince a person to do a thing and there aren't a hundred people around to witness it. Doors, on the other hand, work in both situations, which makes them slightly better, IMO.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

@Ganymede It was. And if that's all it was used for, I wouldn't care. But its not. It gets applied to player against player social interactions as well. And that's where I draw my line.

See, I think it should be applied to PvP situations. It's a neutral way to resolve a social situation that doesn't end in 'nuh uh because I said so, my person would never do that' which gets applied to just about every social roll ever. Which is lame as fuck.

I wouldn't mind tweaking the system a little bit right now, though. As it stands, everyone just assumes that everyone is hostile to everyone and like some sort of dark magic, you can't roll. There should be intervals between there that are missing. 'Uneasy' and 'Unfriendly' are the ones that I would add in, personally. Hostile would be -strictly- for active hostility, in the form of blows are being thrown, or something like that. Some very real, clear and present danger outside of 'ugh, what a dick'. Because dicks can still get people to do what they want, and people work with people they don't like after some convincing that it's the best way to go about things.

@Coin said:

This is also an issue. I think the only real way to do it is constantly remind people, and have staff constantly remind people. But that can get preachy/insistent/annoying, so... It's an issue. Something very visible would help, but then it turns into "I have this color on my short desc because I'm special" and I just... ugh.

The other way to deal with this is to do the thing I've been advocating since the new system came out and make the Doors system mechanically meaningful.

Status gives you a bonus to social rolls.

Doors are an excellent way to try and achieve a social outcome.

You might hate that motherfucking detective, but that motherfucking detective can still be a pretty imposing dude. You might have heard a thousand and ten stories about Mr. Smith that makes you inherently treat him as a monster, but somehow he still charms you.

Remind people that their desires are not the final arbiter of what happens to the character, the system is.

Part of this is people just not being willing to do those things and enforce outcomes. There's no one perfect method, of course. Someone will always be unhappy with something. But at least this way, status has some real crunch.

@Thenomain said:

@Derp said:

I hear people talk about systems like FATE and hear things like 'oh it's so easy, it's a great starter thing, so quick and straightforward', and I'm the guy that just kind of cringes and fake smiles while thinking 'that's ... greaaaat. Come join me at the grown ups table when you're ready to learn DnD or WoD and pass into adulthood of gaming'.

Yeah, man, without structured rules for make-believe, it's so much more kiddy.

@Thenomain said:

@Derp said:

I hear people talk about systems like FATE and hear things like 'oh it's so easy, it's a great starter thing, so quick and straightforward', and I'm the guy that just kind of cringes and fake smiles while thinking 'that's ... greaaaat. Come join me at the grown ups table when you're ready to learn DnD or WoD and pass into adulthood of gaming'.

Yeah, man, without structured rules for make-believe, it's so much more kiddy.

No, no. This is more than that.

Baby Formula RP - Cowboys and Indians
Gerber Graduates - FATE

The more advanced systems are like the real food. It's about taking the training wheels off. It's about playing with people with a grasp of advanced systems because I want to know they're smart enough to grok them, and work within them.

I'm an elitist. I'm aware of that. I feel no shame.

@Misadventure said:

GURPS often provides excellent starter reference to various genres, eras, and topics.
Stuff that in your pipe and smoke it.

Mainly I agree with you on GURPS, though I will say that it appeals to some folks need for a sense of realism being baked into the game rules. Much like Spectrum Smallarms/Phoenix Command, it may not BE realistic, but it pulls it off as a feeling for a decent chunk of folks. It certainly doesn't do well pulling off the genres, eras, or topics.

See, this is how I feel about most modern systems. I -like- complexity. I really do. I like that there are rules that cover a wide range of things and they each have specific things that you have to do in order to make that work. I hear people talk about systems like FATE and hear things like 'oh it's so easy, it's a great starter thing, so quick and straightforward', and I'm the guy that just kind of cringes and fake smiles while thinking 'that's ... greaaaat. Come join me at the grown ups table when you're ready to learn DnD or WoD and pass into adulthood of gaming'.

It's the same reason why I've pretty much stopped believing in any version of DnD past 3.5. I refuse to play Dungeons of Warcraft, I don't care how much 'quicker and easier' it is, and why most MMORPG's make my eye twitch.

@il-volpe said:

@Derp said:
'Well, in light of the larger criteria, there are certain terms and conditions which exclude you from being eligible from the thing we said you were eligible for on the tin, sorry about that.'

I'm afraid I missed the 'sorry about that', and just saw, 'And this should not piss you off, why can't you understand that?'

One of us has to be the nice one, dammit.

@il-volpe said:

@Jaunt It is outright deceptive in the context of advertising outside of the RPI community.

This. It's pretty much your classic bait and switch, dude. It's only foggy because when called out on it, you tried to shimmy over to the other thing and be like 'Well, in light of the larger criteria, there are certain terms and conditions which exclude you from being eligible from the thing we said you were eligible for on the tin, sorry about that.'

Especially when you come into a community dedicated to MU's and start advertising your stuff as if it pertains to us when you very clearly seem to indicate that it does, but it doesn't, but it really does, even if it really doesn't.

Works fine for me in Chrome, apparently.

@Arkandel said:

@Derp said:

@Arkandel said:

• Everyone gets a 'minimum income' just for existing. This isn't a lot (say, 1 XP/week in GMC terms) but it allows even the most casual players to buy things over time. This goes into a universally accessible pool by all characters, so newly created PCs will likely be behind but not hopelessly so.

So, like, I don't follow. It all goes into one big pool somewhere, and anybody can draw off of it? I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Example, for clarity?

It's very simple - let's say we're 30 weeks into the game. All approved characters have been given 30 'automatic' XP. That's the baseline.

• There is a Diablo 3-inspired mechanic - Paragon XP. That's a permanent resource accessible separately by your characters and works as follows:
  ** Half of all your non-automatic Beats are added to it, essentially making each acquired Beat count as 0.3 XP).
  ** All Beats gained from PrP running or participation are added into Paragon XP, essentially making plots more attractive than bar RP.

This is not bad. This I like. It would mean tracking the pools seperately, though, which could get somewhat confusing. And how would the amount of non-automatic xp affect the thing above, if at all?

So, using the same example as above, let's say you've accumulated 30 Beats on your characters through activity. You now also have 15 Paragon Beats which your alts may spend (each alt gets 15 Beats).

See the last part confuses me too. Non-staggered as in how? I mean, I like the tone of the thing in general, especially paragon xp, but i'm not sure I follow enough of your proposed implementation to be able to really provide feedback one way or another yet.

The idea is to promote activity but gradually raise the overall tone of the game. The design so far only includes the barebones of the system just to make it easy to discuss - you'd need to still have sanity checks in place such as diminishing returns and activity requirements to be eligible for automatic XP, spending delays and so on.

Ahhh, I get it. See, I'm not all in favor of that. I'm more in favor of the newer players starting out with a faster rate of xp gain than older players, kind of like Eldritch has going for it, mainly because when you have -- I guess I would call that an 'instantaneous catchup' system, then you run into things like what you saw on TR, where new players have lots of xp to custom-tailor their sheets to a min-max degree without having to go through the same sorts of trials and tribulations that older characters went through when assigning and allocating xp, which usually causes them to have a more diverse xp spread. In essence, that would still favor new characters late in the game over old characters, not something I'm a particular fan of.

I do like the idea of earned xp being worth something more than automatic interval xp. It means that doing something risky and epic is slightly less risky, because you build a strong base for yourself and in the event you fail and die, you're not starting over at 0.

@Arkandel said:

• Everyone gets a 'minimum income' just for existing. This isn't a lot (say, 1 XP/week in GMC terms) but it allows even the most casual players to buy things over time. This goes into a universally accessible pool by all characters, so newly created PCs will likely be behind but not hopelessly so.

So, like, I don't follow. It all goes into one big pool somewhere, and anybody can draw off of it? I'm not entirely sure what you mean here. Example, for clarity?

• There is a Diablo 3-inspired mechanic - Paragon XP. That's a permanent resource accessible separately by your characters and works as follows:
  ** Half of all your non-automatic Beats are added to it, essentially making each acquired Beat count as 0.3 XP).
  ** All Beats gained from PrP running or participation are added into Paragon XP, essentially making plots more attractive than bar RP.

This is not bad. This I like. It would mean tracking the pools seperately, though, which could get somewhat confusing. And how would the amount of non-automatic xp affect the thing above, if at all?

I believe the above should result in a non-staggered system where dinosaurs are ahead of the curve but within reach of newer characters, where activity is rewarded but casual players are still given enough to advance, where alts are easily made and character death/retirement is resolved more smoothly, and where socialization and plot participation is incentivized.

Thoughts?

See the last part confuses me too. Non-staggered as in how? I mean, I like the tone of the thing in general, especially paragon xp, but i'm not sure I follow enough of your proposed implementation to be able to really provide feedback one way or another yet.

I long ago gave up on trying to search for things. I now just do my level best to try and remember vaguely where something was.

So after taking some time away to consider some of this, I think that I partially agree with @ganymede. But only partially.

The moving cap idea is okay, if the cap moves fairly often. Capping things 'per season' of something seems like too much of a hard-and-fast cap for my tastes. But I'm also okay with the idea of capping the amount of xp that can be gained per week, or per scene, or whatever. Eldritch currently has that. You can get whatever the auto-gain is, +10 regular beats for doing things, +10 extra beats per player for running things per week. Which ultimately comes out to something like 4-6 xp a week max, which is pretty high under the WoD system, if you're running at full burn and are willing to do enough stuff to hit that number.

As very few people actually hit that number or anywhere close to that number, it doesn't create unreasonable setbacks, while still allowing for some degree of parity.

The amount of xp you've earned in auto-gains also slows down the more xp you have, so the older people have to do more in order to keep their advantage over newer people, which is also kosher with me. New people don't have automatic equal footing with the people who are already there (in which I agree with @Miss-Demeanor, at that point you're really just sticking it to your existing players). They start with the same things in chargen as everyone else started with in chargen, and have to work their way up from there. That's still equality. Not 'gimme all the stuff too' equality, but 'I have a chance to get there as well' equality.

So, in consideration ... personal per-short-period-of-time caps are okay, so long as it's not a game-wide ceiling that isn't gonna move for a good long while, but I still don't buy this 'new people should be able to do all the same things at the same level that existing people can' mentality, or the idea that those who can't for whatever reason do as much as others should be equally 'rewarded'. You get out of it what you put into it.