Best posts made by faraday

@seraphim73 said in What isn't CGen for?:

I would also add that I want to make sure that the most awesome parts of the character's story aren't behind them -- I want characters who do awesome things on grid, not brag about the awesome things they did in their background.

I really don't mind characters having done awesome things in their background. I more mind somebody who wants to do All The Awesome Things. They were a child-savant mathematician from a rich family who got their third degree black belt by age 12, were top student at the naval academy, top gun at flight school, and earned the medal of valor for saving a shuttle full of schoolchildren on their first mission out.

Yeah... no. (And I actually have seen backgrounds almost as bad as that.)

@seraphim73 said in What isn't CGen for?:

a BG is to make sure that the player understands the setting to some degree and has a character that fits into it

My favorite arguments for backgrounds... there was this one guy who was trying to play a literal Vampire on a straight-up historical Wild West MUSH. He did a lot of weird stuff before staff caught on to what he was doing.

Also on B5MUSH (which didn't have bgs in the early days), I was in this scene once with a Pak'ma'ra character, who was posing like there was more than one of him. Puzzled, I looked at his desc, and realized that he was described as having three bodies. I was all: "Dude, why are there three of you?" "Because the other four died." "..." He honestly thought that the Pak'ma'ra were some kind of symbiotic pack organism, heaven knows why.

If wacky BGs were a once-in-a-blue-moon occurrence, you might be able to get away without them. But they really aren't. Many players come to games with honest misconceptions about the theme or really unsuitable character concepts.

@thatguythere said in What isn't CGen for?:

Pretty much every TT I have been in required a background anyway

Interesting - the TT games I've been in have never required backgrounds. So I can understand how it can be a foreign concept to some.

@seraphim73 said in What isn't CGen for?:

I don't think that justifications for high stats mean that characters can't take high stats,

Yeah, totally. I don't really care if you want your marine to be a virtuoso violinist due to some interesting quirk of their background (or a scientist, like @Ganymede's char). Mostly I'm just interested in continuity: Is there a sensible reason for it, or was it just "I didn't realize what the numbers meant".

@ganymede said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

And it does not seem as if there will be any middle ground.

That's not true though. Several middle-ground alternatives have been proposed by various people (@Thenomain , @Seraphim73 , myself and others) if you go back and look at those other threads. But the middle ground gets lost in the yelling of the people on the extremes, the insults, and the hyperbole.

Yeah, I guess it is a lot like politics.

From a player perspective, for me it doesn't really matter - I don't like rostered chars anyway. From a staff perspective, it's just a question of logistics. A roster character is supposed to be complete, approved, and ready to play - that's the whole point. On a game where PBs are required/expected, then the character isn't complete until they have one. I don't want to have to remember to chase people down after they've chosen a roster and hound them to select a PB (and empty log icons bother my OCD). So it's just a hassle if the roster PCs don't have a PB.

If they've never been played before, I really don't care if somebody wants to change it. But I don't allow PB switches for anyone - roster or OC - once they've been on the grid for a couple weeks. It's a continuity issue for me. I know different games have different views on continuity though so YMMV.

@mietze said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

It's just a part of the game. Maybe we should stop treating other players like they're NPCs in our tabletop game, where we can be very passive in what is done to/with us?

I've been all over this topic advocating for a more consent-based approach. You're reading more into my post than what I actually said. I was just trying to point out that "roll then discuss" is a hybrid of what I believe are the two more common forms of conflict resolution (roll and deal with it // consent). I never said that No RPG EVER did it, or even that it was a bad idea. I just think there are pretty obvious reasons why a lot of folks are resistant to it.

Also? MUSHes are not TTRPGs, but when you are building one based on a TTRPG system with a slew of versions, I think peoples' past TTRPG experiences are relevant to the discussion because they come in as baggage.

Side note: I never played CoD I played a really ancient version of WoD. So even if it has been that way "for a long long time" it wasn't that way when I played.

@roz said in Rosters: To PB or Not To PB?:

you can play the game of "does this character resemble what's written on their sheet."

I really don't get this. Descs are the most malleable part of a character. Literally @desc me=Something completely different. If your system has coded demographics for skin tone and weight and whatnot that requires a stats tweak. But unless their appearance is somehow critical to the character, what difference does it make?

Especially in a sci-fi or fantasy setting - if you want to take my Emma Stone Caprican Viper jock and turn her into Lucy Liu - more power to you. (Of course, casting a modern-day Chinese-American Naval pilot whose ancestry is a critical point in their background as Emma Stone... that's just ignorant, as Hollywood is slowly learning).

It all comes down to how much about a roster char you allow players to tweak when taking them over, but personally descs and PBs are super-low on my list of things I'd care about.

@derp said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

If this super-important thing to the character is so SUPER IMPORTANT, shouldn't it already be reflected in their attribute/skill levels and or merits?

This is the crux of what I'm saying. There are, IMHO, SUPER IMPORTANT things that affect human behavior that are not in any way reflected in WoD stats or the social conflict system used to resolve them. If you disagree with that and think the social rules are fine? Great, use the rules as-written on your game and insist people abide by them. (and/or recommend that Gany do so)

But it's not cool to demean people with arguments like "just because you think your character should be more resistant to this, but don't have the stats to back it up" when we're saying the stats themselves and the rules behind them are an unsatisfactory abstraction. Also, it works both ways. Sometimes those same factors should give the attacker an advantage.

ETA: And yes, I do think it's possible to come up with a system that will be reasonably simple and effective and satisfactory to most people. @Seraphim73 has done a lot of good work to that end with his Furystorm system.

@bananerz said in Rosters: To PB or Not To PB?:

Very skeevy when you think about strangers using your photo/name for some undead werewolf slash game.

For a random person, sure. But for an actor? That doesn't strike me as skeevy at all. "Dream casts" are a pretty commonly-accepted thing - even so far as to be officially supported on IMDB. To say nothing of all the celebrity memes. Yes, technically it's a copyright violation - but most MUSHes are a walking copyright violation of rules and/or setting anyway, so this seems like a weird place to draw a hard line in the sand. I view it as free publicity for the actor so I don't feel too guilty about it. (There have actually been times where I've been all: "Who's that?" and looked somebody up that I otherwise wouldn't have.)

@thenomain said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

There was no limitation to what could be compared, no hard system, just what the players decided was appropriate for the situation.

That's basically how the FS3 opposed roll system works, FWIW, which is used for everything besides when people decide to use the +combat system. It just doesn't require the other person to accept before the results are printed. (i.e. it's "object after" not "agree before").

<FS3> Cate rolls Stealth+Reflexes (8 6 5 5 4 2 2 1) vs Erin's Demolitions+Wits (7 6 6 4 4 4)
<FS3>          Marginal Victory for Erin.

Don't even ask me what that particular contest might represent, lol But it shows how the rolls can be arbitrary.

@thatguythere said in Rosters: To PB or Not To PB?:

@bananerz said in Rosters: To PB or Not To PB?:

people getting very precious about said PB (but it'll wreck immersion if we have 2!).

This gets me, how small of a world to people live in to not run into folks that look like each other...

It bugs me in the same way that it would bug me if you had the same actor playing two different roles in a TV series. It's not: "Wow, character A looks a lot like character B... what a coincidence" it's "WTF is wrong with this casting agent that they put Chris Pratt in two different roles in the same movie?" (Unless of course that's the whole point of the movie.)

I won't claim that it's rational, because of course two people can coincidentally look alike. It just bugs me. :helpless shrug:

@arkandel said in Historical settings:

All 'Hollywood' means to me is that we shouldn't let gameplay get bogged down in unnecessary details. The game oughtn't be about the minutiae of history but about characters, plots, pace - all the usual elements of good storytelling.

Like @Tinuviel said - I think that's a fine philosophy, but the devil's in the details. "Sure I'll just pop on the stagecoach to go to my cousin's wedding down in Texas" is a perfectly fine story to one person and a "ZOMG that makes absolutely no sense in historical context" bugaboo to the next person.

Don't get me wrong - I enjoy historical settings. My first real game was Maddock (Western), I ran Sweetwater Crossing (Western) and played/staffed on TGG (WWI/WWII) so... that's my jam. But like others have said, on an open MU environment it can be a real PITA trying to juggle different expectations.

@surreality said in Rosters: To PB or Not To PB?:

I'd never complain about it to the players personally, bear them any ill will, or stomp my feet like a huffy princess to staff about it, but that really did feel pretty shitty in that, "Aw, jeez, come on... " bad luck sense.

Yeah, I mean, on my games it's just coded into the system. Once a PB is taken it just ... can't be taken again. I can get folks being disappointed because someone else beat them to the punch, but I really haven't seen any drama resulting from it. Frankly there's enough of "OMG Chris Pratt again?" going on that I'm happier not having duplicates of them.

@bored said in Historical settings:

After that, it's probably easier to address the players who is nonetheless continuing to press things too far (IE: excluding the female doctor above from plots vs. 'A lady physician? My word!') as individual problem cases. There are always going to be people who want to press that RP whether or not its supported in your theme (I think I recall mention of hostile sexist players on, say, a BSG game, where the setting is totally fantastic AND does nothing to support it).
This turns back to the old adage that you can't design around bad players.

Definitely. But without those red lines being clearly drawn, then the guy who's all "We don't need any help from a lady with delusions of being a physician, thank-you-very-much" doesn't know they're being a problem player. As far as they're concerned, they're just playing appropriate to the actual historical setting. (As opposed to on a BSG game, where RL -isms are established as not existing in canon, and anybody trying to push them is firmly beyond the bounds of the setting.)

@surreality said in Respecs.:

Losing the XP spent on it is punishing the player by forcing them to keep something that is no longer valid on their sheet, not inflicting consequences on a character.

I don't see it as a punishment though. This ties into my general view of viewing XP as a part of the character not an OOC reward. YMMV. For me it's no different than taking points in "Demolitions" but never actually getting into a scene where you get to blow stuff up. Your character still knows the thing, and who knows - your ballroom dancing knowledge may come up in some way even though you can't shake it like you used to.

@wizz said in Historical settings:

................because both of those sound amazing

LOL. I've never actually seen Twin Peaks, so forgive me if this is a gross mis-characterization, but I think it was more of: "Oh goodness, how did all of these incredibly unusual people end up in this one small town what is going on here?!?!" Twin Peaks 1866

@misadventure said in Respecs.:

@killer-klown said in Respecs.:

Flat costs for everything removes much of the urge to min-max stats at chargen, and makes respecs a legitimate use for changing the direction of the character proper rather than trying to maximise spends.

Is this actually true? To me if you wanted a maxed out stat, getting it through at cgen seems easiest. You may not be saving xp, but you have your focal ability, you are good with it, and you can still pick up little 1s and 2s along the way to fill in empty spots.

Yeah, that hasn't been my experience. No matter what your XP costs are, it still takes time to save them up. Maxing out the stats at chargen will always be the most efficient.

It's true, though, that tiered costs (either in chargen or after chargen) encourage people to min-max more, because it becomes more of a numbers game. But flat XP costs have pros and cons; it's not a cure-all.

@arkandel said in Historical settings:

Even in the most consent-based games I've played someone could say things without requiring consent. So for example if I'm throwing a knife at your PC you can say it didn't hit you; if I'm throwing N-bombs you can't say I never said it. And if you're offended on an OOC level consent won't mean much.

Obviously it depends on the game and it's policies, but there's a difference between consent (which, yes, is more geared towards the knife example) and cooperation (which implies a philosophy of how players are expected to approach each other and work together in game). I would argue that if cooperative storytelling is your game's mission statement, then engaging someone with offensive language is running contrary to that mission.

@arkandel said in Respecs.:

There are also so many factors which if we take under consideration wouldn't hold up. Sure, you've been training like hell on your surgical skills but did you also learn how to be a great hacker in that time while going on adventures with the rest of your group? I guess you did!

There's no universal yardstick for suspension of disbelief. You can pick any popular TV show, which obviously is beloved by millions, and still find a ton of people who look at it like: "OMG this is so ludicrous I can't watch this drivel."

And people have different suspension of disbelief levels for different things. Somebody might be put off by ludicrous wound-recovery times but not by learning times (or vice versa). Everybody has their own individual hot buttons, and people are all-too-quick to dismiss somebody else's hot button with "it's just a game" while getting all bent out of shape when somebody else does something they don't like.

@tinuviel said in When Staff No Longer Cares:

If a game can't survive without you, you're doing it wrong.

I think it's more about whether you've made yourself a bottleneck to reasonable RP. I've run almost all of my games by myself, but they all gave players a lot of freedom to run things on their own (i.e. "just don't burn the place down.") and tools (like +combat and plot hooks) to do so. They were also set up so players weren't constantly at odds with each other (because PvP requires a different level of refereeing.) My games have weathered any number of RL illnesses and vacations through the years without issue.

A game like that could run for ages without staff intervention if players were being proactive about doing their own stuff.

And if they weren't? Well, their loss. My reasons for running a game this way are more important to me than the potential of the game not surviving without me.

@masterreeve said in Shadowrun: Anarchy MU seeking staff:

@sixregrets I totally misunderstood the question. My bad! We're using Rhost.

I'm just over here amused because it isn't often that the Shadowrun influence on AresMUSH/FS3 comes up, lol.

More on topic - I'm no help, but Shadowrun is fun. Good luck.

@mietze said in Learning how to apply appropriate boundaries:

I agree , when expressing discomfort or dissatisfaction is used to try to "win" and get your way. But I think you can have situations where that isnt the case (which is what I assumed Faraday meant) and so if you want to negotiate and are up for that ooc, starting off with "change or leave" may not be the best approach. Because that can and does trigger people who would have perhaps worked with you to find something more agreeable or mutually agreed upon to just say "ok then, bye."
Its like starting off a disagreement or annoyance with your spouse or partner by throwing in a "we can just divorce or break up then!"

Yeah that's what I was trying to get at. Maybe my example wasn't the best.