Best posts made by Devrex

@Hella There's no need to be nervous! I think you'll find the vibe to be relaxed and everyone will be willing to help you until you're comfortable with the system.

@Tirit said in Artificially Slowing Character Growth:

First personally and in experience I've had I don't think players being at different rates matter much unless it comes to PvP.

It matters a little. If I go into a scene with someone who is XP maxed and I'm there as a near-starting character I start to feel some serious "why am I here, then?" I hate feeling pointless or useless in scenes or groups.

@il-volpe I mean...the statement is just basic truth regardless of who it comes from. That there are variations in skill level when it comes to evoking a character, setting up situations that are compelling, creating a vibe, etc...that's also just basic truth. That some have more "coin of the realm" (ideas) either due to base talent or experience or the willingness to cultivate...also just basic truth. Or OOC self-management skills in re: coming across as someone who is not likely to become a headache later by blowing up into some big emotional OOC mess because you forgot to pose whether or not you liked the fruitcake they clearly posed putting on the table or because Any Number of Other Reasons Big Emotional Scenes of Some Uncomfortable Variety take place.

None of this is a commentary on you btw, these are very generalized observations.

The good news is, there's always room to learn, grow, to learn new techniques, to improve OOC emotional regulation or negotiation skills...or to find people who are on your wavelength. Everyone has somewhere they can grow. I sure as hell have multiple places I could stand to grow.

And the flip side of "wow I have an anxiety problem" is "wow a staggering number of people in this hobby share the anxiety..." which is also good news, because it also means that there are others just waiting to be met, too. Not all of us can get along, or like each other, or get each other, but there are usually oh, probably...four or so floating around, at least, who can get each of us.

So I mean you know, IDK about top of your game, so much as not getting discouraged, staying chill, looking for new ways to become effective at generating what you want out of the experience and both finding your folks and staying open to finding your folks without falling into the uh...MUSHer's Swamp of Sadness, so to speak. You'll never feel as wanted or as sure of yourself as you or anyone probably wants to feel...but you can probs focus on providing entertainment so that you in turn are entertained, and that is a more reliable metric than whether or not the brain weasels are fed.

@ZombieGenesis Great review, and now I want to check out this game at some point (despite being a bit burned out on Marvel).

I wonder if some of the vagueness isn't intentional, given in comics, characters often can or can't pull off extreme versions of their powers "at the speed of plot." But it definitely seems like you'd have to have the right group to play it.

@ZombieGenesis I think players are open to different experiences, and I know quite a few players who are pretty burned out on WoD. I think if you're passionate about running it and you've got stuff going and make it easy for players to find stuff to do then you'll get plenty. You might not get 70+ per night like you will on a WoD game, but you won't get the problems inherent to 70+ people a night, either.

@wizz You don't know me. I have made no attacks on your person. I'll thank you to make none on mine, nor to make assumptions about me. You are welcome to think what you wish of course, but the last feeling I feel is contempt. If you want to engage with the point let's engage with the point. If you just wish to call me names because you do not like my position, then there's no point in continuing. I have in fact engaged in no attacks on anyone's person, other than to say I thought @GreenFlashlight was making an unfair argument. An argument, not stuff about them personally.

@ZombieGenesis Some of the other plugins could also work well. Someone already coded a Cortex plugin and a FATE, and one or two others I can't remember. The audience that is super duper into FS3 isn't necessarily the audience that would come in on a game with any other system.

FATE might work well; you could probably look at how the Dresden Files used it to modify it for Nightlife. I see many similarities between the wiki write-up of how the Nightlife system works and how Dresden handles the loss of humanity and stuff.

That said, a quick readover of the Nightlife system certainly indicates it has enough in common with WoD/COD mechanics to make it a doable changeover.

I'm also not quite as cynical as Ghost about coding the system you like, or about how people want to RP and what they want to RP. If you are good at code, like the system, would like to use the system, then I'd say as a counterpoint to his valid points that after awhile if you're going to make a game at all, you gotta do what pleases you and lets you make the game that you like and that you're passionate about playing and running. That's part of staying sane, too.

@macha Most people are just super grateful to have something to do tonight!

@greenflashlight I see a lot of labeling of opinions as misogynist without them actually being at all misogynist.

Certainly the most recent dust up shared that problem. I wildly disagree that there was anything in the Set A words that was misogynist.

I saw a lot of weaponized victimization in the aftermath of that post. The actual opinion? The actual words? Were at no point actually engaged with.

And I object to that.

Logging out now for awhile as I'm finally starting to feel genuinely angry, which will be the reason for silence on my end as this conversation continues.

@bloodangel That's completely uncalled for and about 9 kinds of not okay.

@faraday Yeah I struggle with the same things in async unless it is straight up just a one on one scene.

Like one of the suggestions here was to async GMing. I've tried it but man do I hate it. I run on energy and excitement. If someone doesn't pose for four days I conclude they are bored and I am doing a bad job, and don't have any of that energy-excitement gas it takes to keep going. I finally had to stop offering them for that reason. Maybe it's just a brain weasel and they're having a great time and that's really the fastest it can go, but it's still a struggle.

@L-B-Heuschkel does a great job of GMing async and making it really fun and I'm not sure what his techniques are there or what he's doing differently that I'm not doing (or if he's just wired differently as a GM) but.

@l-b-heuschkel True, and that's something I haven't enforced. I say 24 hours and then get really uncomfortable moving on. Especially if 24 hours have passed and nobody has posed.

@Ghost I've sort of jury rigged maps and stuff into some of my scenes some of the time, and it worked well (sometimes with an utterly terrible Google Sheet that nevertheless got the job done) I certainly wouldn't say no to some sort of integration that let players move tokens around on one and let me present some information that didn't solely rely on text without forcing them to go to some other site.

@lotherio It helps me, and I've done it, but it depends on the scene.

Multiscening is miserable for me if I'm trying to run coded combat. It's fine for me if I'm doing up to 3 small freeform scenes that are mostly centered around 'same conflict, different parts of the map.' 4 is pushing it and I'll feel fried at night's end. But I have to be in the zone to do it at all, lots of energy and momentum and engagement from players, rested and fed and happy. Otherwise I'm best sticking to GMing one scene. I can GM one and play one no problem. I can do two non-GM'd scenes in two windows no problem, especially if they're moving at different paces.

In my younger days, lol...I could do all sorts of shit. Six windows with 7 players each and lots of insanity reigning? No problem! Let me just enter a sort of mania-trance-state and ride the high, I've got this! But these days that would be a recipe for disaster.

@zombiegenesis But then, are the people who are going to flip a table because you changed a House Rule to make the game more MUSH-playable, did all the work of making a game in a landscape where there are precious-few of them, and presented it to them really the people you want to play with in the first place? There's nothing wrong with adjusting things to fit the medium.

@kk I'm a 5'5" guy, and while I just go with whatever height my PB is I am happy as all get out to get some one who is 6'2" and up. c_c

@Kumakun Looking forward to seeing it!

@Ghost Yeah I think it looked pretty good from the player side, and that's pretty good feedback too...I was afraid if I charged less than $20 a seat it would look like something was wrong with my games. You can filter by game system to search for games, or time, or anything else, last I saw. And I guess there might be some appeal to: "I know that Curse of Strahd was really fun cause my friend played it and had fun and now I want to play it too," and the certainty of knowing someone competent wrote the adventure. I wouldn't want to be militant about bumping seats, that sounds no fun at all. I didn't try it as a player cause I don't have that kind of money to burn right now, but I did think I could make a little extra dough. Unfortunately the systems I'm interested in running are not D&D and Pathfinder and so I struggled to find players.