@Thenomain said in How can everyone play the same game?:
Something I haven't seen since Aether: Have a test at the end of chargen.
It might be surprising that I'm advocating hoops to jump through, but if you make it mild then this way you can make sure that players aren't skimming, or if they are skimming then they recognize that this particular thing is important.
I have wanted to do this so many times.
I have been told no precisely that many times.
@Wretched said in How can everyone play the same game?:
You cant have one sphere being super draconic in rules and whatever, and another be totally lazy-fair. Coherence.
This one I don't totally agree with. It depends on the sphere, and the rules.
I make mages wait longer times to raise their Arcana than a werewolf to raise their Renown, or Gifts, for example. because there just aren't that many of them, and they do more.
I also require some spheres to write backgrounds, because they're much more essential to me figuring out where the hell they fit in and what they're going to be up to. They get the bonus xp for it, though, so it's not like it's super disparate treatment. By the time we get through the chargen job, you basically write one anyway.
Other stuff, not. Equipment runs the same, mundane spends run the same. Etc. But treating each sphere as if it were wholly identical, when they are not wholly identical, is how you end up with some crazy shit.
@Thenomain said in How can everyone play the same game?:
"no, but"?
In practice, it usually works out to "no, but."
BUT. That also has come back to backfire on me in the past too. People will make some outrageous demand, and then expect me to compromise down to something I would have said no to in the first place under the "no, but" framework.
ETA: The perfect example of this is the current mishmash of rules that govern the Werewolf renown system.
I find "no, and here's why" is a better solution for that, even if in actual practice it turns into more "no, and here's why, but we can maybe do this thing which might work for you."
@Arkandel said in How can everyone play the same game?:
I like the conversations we are having here lately as they are quite constructive and the combined experience and wisdom and differing points of view are really interesting
One of their tangents was making sure everyone is playing the same game. That got me to thinking - how does that work? Once you have an idea, a vision for the kind of MU* you want to create... what needs to be done and what are some good ways to effectively communicate something locked in your head first to other potential staff members then to (heavens forbid) your players so everyone on roughly the same wave length?
One thing that I decided to do was make it as absolutely clear as I could what I expected and what they could expect from me, on an OOC level. This is why I have an going FAQ section. It's not house rules, per se, but it explains what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and how I think it should work. More importantly, it explains what we do not want to see, and the why there.
The clearer your OOC communication on these matters, the better.
For example:
- Is compromise a valuable principle at each stage of that process or does it dilute the vision? Do you need to draw lines in the sand ("my game will NOT focus on politics") or is it better to get buy-in from amalgamized contributions?
To a point. Compromise is fine when you can find a way to work it into the idea that you're trying to sell. Compromise is bad when people try and browbeat you to surrender, and then people learn that if they whine loudly and hard enough, they get whatever they want. We've seen it happen countless times.
I'm always willing to listen, and if we can reach a mutual agreement that's awesome. But my default answer is 'no', or at best 'maybe, if you can sell me on it'. If, for whatever reason, you cannot accept that -- then we have an entirely different problem.
- How useful are wikis? Do you find the information is read? How hard is it to keep it from being stale? Can it serve as a 'true north' of the MU*'s mission statement or is it just words just read over once or glossed over?
I've found that most people don't read wikis. Many people gloss wikis. But they're still useful. They're useful as a respository for the stuff I've done previously. They're useful for not having to answer the same question a thousand times (usually). But most importantly, they're useful to show that, yes, in fact, this policy has been in place since god was a boy, and it was right there the whole time, I didn't just make this up to screw you over. There is a design and a plan.
- How important are in-game channels for the purpose of defining the game's goals and theme? Do they serve a purpose or is that lost in spam or read only by the players actively reading them at the time?
Game channels are useful for facilitating RP, but they can also go too far. Channel for every sub-group out there? You can bet that most people won't be on the main one. And most people won't be on the sub-channels either because then there are just too many channels on.
I'll make channels for things like packs and cabals, and channels for spheres. More than that and we have to have a really good reason for doing so, or else people just use them as an extension of whatever IC/OOC hidey hole they prefer to be in.
- How critical (if at all) are the first PrPs ran either by staff or players? Speaking of, is it important - or possible! - to monitor the latter, and how can it be done efficiently without coming off as micromanaging them?
I do ask that logs of PrPs get posted. This is a pretty effective way of looking over everything and making sure it doesn't go off the rails. I also ask that people give me a thirty-second elevator pitch on the plot that they want to run before they run it. I can usually offer feedback and ideas on what sorts of things would be cool to include, and be on the lookout for pitfalls.
Logger objects make posting logs painfully easy. Making scene xp contigent on the log getting posted makes these easy enough to track. You don't have to read-read it. Just skim for content. It's easy stuff.
Mage on Portland is officially open!
Upsides:
There are plenty of beginning Mysteries to go out and explore.
It's a new sphere, so everyone's just as clueless as everyone else!
The players are fantastic.
Downsides:
The wiki is kind of a hot mess right now. I've been doing my best to get information out there, but honestly, I have no idea how this beast works. Mage templates aren't completed, and I cannot tell you when the ETA on them will be. All of the information is conveniently (haha nervous look) on a single page, so you don't have to go hunting for it, though. Even if it's a bit crowded.
Legacies I have writeups for but I don't have them on the wiki because I still am not sure where the hell I am putting them, and haven't even vetted them all really.
Things are basically in a beta phase for the next few months to see if all this catches on fire or not.
If you're interested come check it out.
Every wiki link leads to a server configuration error. Just thought I would throw that out there!
@insomniac7809 said in Staff scrutiny during CGen:
ently suggest that a PC who owns a hopping nightclub is a great PC for a different game.
I've done this.
They all switched it out to 'Irish Pub Dive Bar slash underground boxing ring'
@Jennkryst said in General Video Game Thread:
I spent monies on the flight stick with an extremely LEWD name. And then bought another one.
Wait, what is this? Link me!
@Lotherio said in Staff scrutiny during CGen:
If a player makes some concept that infringes on others fun, and the others stop playing with them, and then they do not have fun ... then staff failed to ensure the player has a good time.
Double post for ... what? There is only so much that staff can glean from a sheet and a background. I've seen brilliant sheets with players that turned out to be total morons who couldn't read a room and find the flow if their life depended on it, not that they actually tried. Brilliant sheets tend to come from people very focused on their own character, to the exclusion of all else.
Staff can only take so much of a hand in things. If you get a character through CG that follows the rules but then you play them in a way that infringes on the fun of others, staff hasn't failed to ensure you have fun. You're just an asshole.
I tend to fall somewhere in the middle as well.
I tend to not be super draconian in my views, but extraordinary stats will need some kind of justification that works them into the character's story and fleshes them out. The higher the stat, the more you'll need. Telling me that you have Strength 5 because you have a gym membership isn't gonna cut it. Telling me that you have Strength 5 because you spent years in a soviet prison where the only thing you could do was fight for your life and try to get as strong as you could? That probably would.
But more importantly, I want to make sure that you're not making something that is gonna clash with the current game. I want to know where your character fits into it. You can make the most badass sheet in the universe but if you don't know what's on it or what it means then you and I have a problem.
I'm open to a broad range of concepts and diverse backgrounds and playstyles, but if there's one thing I've learned lately, the more rope you give someone, the more they'll use that leeway and freedom to try and strangle scenes for everyone else if you find a clashing playstyle.
So I may be a bit more toward the draconian side than others, but I'm cool with that. I'm also not just gonna turn you loose and watch you run amok.
@Ganymede said in Any Fate free WOD games left?:
I think that was more skew's doing or Derp's doing.
Not me. I wasn't on Reno for more than a hot second. I didn't fully get on board until Portland.
@Wretched said in Spars and fights:
@Ganymede Last time I did that with you, Count got his taint punched... just saying.
That sounds like a magnificent scene, lol.
I generally don't really have a problem making combats both fun and technically light.
Look, you really want to write these things like fight scenes in a book. As much as people like @Kestrel might love all the little technical aspects of the fight, to most of us, getting too bogged down in the weeds is just boring. And I even have a background in martial arts.
Worse, it looks a bit pretentious and makes it seem like you're trying to grandstand if you get too weedsy with how things are going down.
You sort of have to find a good middle ground, and a good way to show the back and forth. Give enough detail to show what's going on, but not so much that you lose the audience in the finer points of kinetics. You don't necessarily have to agree on how it all goes down beforehand, either, so long as you both are halfway decent at reading the other.
@Auspice said in The Masked Singer:
This is the TV & Movies board.
Take your music to the appropriate threads.
Look, you're the one who brought music here. You opened that door. Deal with it. 
Any discussion about masked singers just inevitably reminds me of CRO:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huBNgxolXFo
Though I think most would probably think Slipknot.
Also remember that systems are an abstraction. Two people rarely stand face to face and swing swords at each other in succession, and 'attacks per round' is really more 'maximum hits per round'. Make it entertaining. Have them swing and parry, or make some flourishes.
Avoid mortal wounds unless you take them down to dying health. Most HP damage can be expressed as smaller cuts and bruises, burns, whatev.
@Auspice said in Games? Do they exist? Where?:
But I think @krmbm and I have some better luck by being non-WoD games. I feel like finding STs these days on WoD is a lot harder, unfortunately. I'm not sure if its burnout or just the way that community has shifted.
It's because you can't win in WoD. You always piss someone off, or become the target of the latest social outrage. It's exhausting.
@ZombieGenesis said in Worst Movies:
"identical twins"
I don't believe they were described as identical, simply 'mirror twins'. They even had different dominant hands, IIRC.
