@macha said in The Work Thread:
I am not sure what a demand letter is, to be honest.
Basically just a letter from a lawyer reminding them that they have an obligation under ADA laws to provide reasonable accommodations and demanding that they do so. (My I-am-not-a-lawyer summary :))
It shows them that you're serious AND that you have legal representation, which is often enough to get them off their butts.
@ganymede said in Encouraging Proactive Players:
I don't think Apos was talking about people who are simply not proactive; I think he is talking about people who are actively negative. If you let them persist on your game, you're going to quickly find yourself with an empty game because that bullshit gets old really fast.
The examples given were "10 people making sadface emoticons of how no one loves them and takes them to plots, or bitching that one person on their plot got a shiny, or someone whining that Proactive Paul gets to go on every story and on and on and on"
Even good players while and complain sometimes. Even I whine and complain sometimes and I'm one of the most "can't we all just play nice and get along" crusaders on these boards. I think people need to be mature enough to take complaints with a grain of salt. Now if it's bordering on abusive or being so constant and obnoxious that it's causing a disruption, that's different. But kicking someone off the game just for whining? Come on.
@Ghost I agree those are complications that need to be addressed but most TTRPG systems have similar mechanics that need to be adapted to MU environments. I don’t think that constitutes falling apart.
I believe the option you want is under Preferences->Windowing->Display worlds and spawns like Apple Mail or iTunes. The "old traffic light style" also has a sidebar.
ETA - Oh, I guess it's also a bug, per Roz's post. But that menu item also shows and hides the sidebar.
@Admiral That's horrible. Don't know what state you live in or whether you care to pursue it, but around here that sort of behavior would be grounds for filing assault charges with the police. Don't know how long you can wait to file a complaint, but something to bear in mind in case there's a next time.
@seraphim73 said in Creative Outlets:
If my PC is usually a jeans-and-t-shirt-guy is wearing a suit, I'll have a suit desc, but I'll also mention that he's wearing a suit in my intro-pose. Just one little mention, not any detail about the suit (unless it's bloody or rumpled or something very distinct).
For me, it's not about whether the outfit is unusual to the character, but to the situation. If you turn up to dance club in a suit and tie, that's kinda unusual and bears mention. Otherwise I'll assume you're in "club clothes" and frankly don't give a crap whether it's jeans or cargo pants or what kind of shirt you're wearing.
@silverfox My guess would be that you have your quotecolor preference set to "blue" instead of to an actual ansi code.
If you have an AresCentral handle, that color option will be in your AresCentral preferences. Otherwise you can set it with the quotecolor command on each individual game.
You can also have Ares colorize text between quotes in poses, to make quotations more visible. The color code can be found in the colors command. You can also combine colors, so %xb%xh will make it bold and blue.
quotecolor <ansi color code> - Sets your quotation color. Leave blank to clear it.
@Thenomain said in Shadowrun: Modern:
I'm using the following definition of Noir: a genre of crime film or fiction characterized by cynicism, fatalism, and moral ambiguity.
What parts of Noir is critical to Shadowrun? Which parts need to be chucked in the fire?
Moral ambiguity: Yes. Very much this.
Cynicism: It fits, but I don't see it as essential. If anything, there's a sort of cheeky edge to SR that lightens it up a little bit, but I think it comes down to the slant of your individual campaign. Our characters through the years were never particularly cynical.
Fatalism: Nope.
Crime film or fiction: I think we hashed this to bits in the other thread. The traditional RPG runner group is a bunch of mercenary criminals, but it doesn't have to be. Shadowrun is an entire world with lots of non-criminal stuff going on in it.
@griatch said in Charging for MU* Code?:
I can tell this is not unusual outside of software projects either; I've had more complex art/design commissions go down similar routes. With art you usually specify how many 'revisions' your contract allows, just for this reason. Without that, the client would nitpick details forever.
Absolutely. Each industry has its particular challenges. I don’t pretend to know all the challenges with art (or jewelry as @surreality mentioned) but I do know with writing that the revisions are usually a known quantity. If the original article was estimated to be 2 hours of work, a revision is probably not going to be more than 2 hours of work. You can estimate sensibly.
Not so with software. Not only is the original estimate notoriously hard, a revision like “oh but can you also make it do X” can be orders of magnitude more than the original work.
I think part of the problem is that roster systems have several potential applications. Each application has pros and cons. The net benefit of those pros and cons will vary depending both on the game and your personal values.
One application is having pre-made characters so you don't have to deal with chargen. On games with lengthy, complex chargen systems (e.g., WoD), this may be more of a benefit than ones with simpler chargen (e.g., FS3). But there will always be some players who like to try out a game with minimal personal investment.
Another application is having existing relationships with other characters. Some players may see this as a net benefit (they don't have to be "the new guy") while others see this as unwelcome baggage. A game that lets stuff be retconned easily can undermine this potential benefit.
A third application is controlling the pool of characters. A game with noble houses may prefer to keep the family members consistent as players come and go. A game set on a deserted island may need a static character pool since there's just no easy way for characters to come and go.
These variations mean that you're not going to achieve universal consensus. You just have to look at how the pros/cons of rosters map to the goals of your game and the preferences of that game's specific playerbase.
Dear my kid's school: I understand that "Comparing Argument Techniques in Two Speeches" is a valid lesson, but surely you could have found a better example than comparing Martin Luther King Jr's "American Dream" speech to George freaking Wallace's "Segregation Forever" address. "How does Wallace's speech effectively use rhetorical techniques?" "Why do you think MLK's speech is considered the winner in the eyes of history?" Seriously?
Some days I just want to homeschool. Sigh.
@auspice said in 'The Magicians' mechanics with FS3:
You're also talking having to craft a huge list of action skills and from my work on The 8th Sea, I found this to be detrimental to a game rather than beneficial.
I don't know jack about Magicians so I can't really weigh in on whether there would be 7 or 30 action skills for the magic stuff. What I can say is that you're right in general - FS3 doesn't work well at all with a big action skill list.
TL;DR; - Putting in too many Action Skills for folks to deal with is really up-ending the game balance apple cart. The whole point of calling them out special as "Action Skills" is to highlight what your game is about. It brings focus to the skills that are likely to be useful in conflict situations so people don't accidentally hamstring themselves or get overwhelmed trying to figure out what they should spend points on. It charges people more for "useful" things and provides some limits so they can't be good at All The Action-y Things.
@auspice said in 'The Magicians' mechanics with FS3:
it'd be Base Attribute + Action Skill for Magic Type + # Bonus (ST directed based on your Background skills)
Just a caution... FS3 is balanced for Attr+Skill+Occasional Situational Modifiers. If the bonus you talk about takes the place of situational modifiers, are only used occasionally, and falls within the same range (-3 to +3) then you should be fine. But if you intend for the bonus to be on top of other situational modifiers, or to add in another skill on top, it can throw the entire balance of the dice mechanic out of whack. Novices would get boosted into the Pro range, Pros would get boosted into the Expert range, and the already-fine line between Pros and Experts would become almost irrelevant. It's the same advice I gave to @Ganymede when talking about factoring in some kind of Mass Effect class skills. Changing the underlying dice mechanic rarely ends well.
@thenomain Wasteland is actually a great example of how scarcity can be realistic but (for some people anyway) not fun. They did a great job of showing how dire things were, making you count every bullet, etc. But at the same time, it was freaking annoying and frustrating to be running around attacking the killer robots with crowbars just because you'd run out of ammo again.
@ghost I don't really see what SSL has to do with keeping out creepers.
Even if you used a third party identity system backed by SSL - say, MSB logins, for instance - I can always just use a VPN, create a new account on MSB, and be somebody else.
And even invite-only games can get someone in who ends up being a jerk under the right set of circumstances. You can't expect a walled garden in this kind of hobby, IMHO, you just have to be prepared to deal with issues as they arise.
@auspice FS3 is just a plugin for Ares. You can remove it and incorporate any system you want. I know that doesn't help you since you said you don't have a coder. Just pointing it out for the record.
I agree with @Lithium that the bare tacks of FATE wouldn't be particularly hard to code. But it has some subtleties that could be a PITA if you wanted them to be codified as opposed to just handled manually by the GM.
@Arkandel You said:
@arkandel said in Potential Buffy Game:
That's the thing though. What makes Buffy Buffy is a very specific blend of themes without which it is just a generic urban fantasy game.
That's a pretty strong statement that without some special blend of themes it somehow isn't a Buffy game, it's just generic urban fantasy.
I disagree. As long as there's some tie to Buffy it's a Buffy game. Whether it's a Buffy game that would interest you is of course entirely for you to say.
@Thenomain said:
Has anyone ever asked the comic book writers how they do it?
No, they're not looking a PvP situations, but they are looking to tell a story with characters whose powers are limited not by statistics but by narrative.
Apples and oranges, I think. A comic book writer doesn't have to deal with the 'actors' playing Hulk and Iron Man getting their noses out of joint because they don't like the way the scene turned out. Once you have multiple people involved, everyone has their own agenda for what they think is the best narrative and they don't necessarily agree.
If players can work it out amongst themselves, great. But if it comes down to staff intervention, you can save yourself a lot of headaches and time arguing if you just say: "OK, roll."
@marsgrad said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
Also, I don't think anyone is suggesting 'my characters has goals and personality quirks' should act like ironclad armor.
Just to be clear: Yes, I am suggesting exactly that. Some things just won't work on some people, just like you can't take out a tank with a pocketknife. Just like no matter how many points I make or how well I make them, I won't sway some people here to change their views on social combat. 
But those "hills to die on" should not be unlimited.