Posts made by faraday

Might consider using Wikidot over MediaWiki. Then you can tie people to their wikidot usernames, and someone could police the changes to see if X was trying to claim to be an alt of Y.

@tragedyjones Yep.

@Thenomain Fair enough. Setting suspension of disbelief aside though, adding wireless makes the decker/hacker a much more integrated, fun and playable concept. And AR is just neat.

@Thenomain said:

The Great War (WW3, I suppose) started October 2077. Yet radios, televisions, population density, all of these are at 1950s levels. Reasons: None. Yet we're stuck on this stupid wired/wireless debate for Shadowrun.

Huh, I always thought Fallout was based on an alternate-history 1950's theme. Shows how much I paid attention

For the record, I did like SR3 a lot. That was the era when I was one of FASA's freelancers, so I'll always have a special fondness for it.

If they had stuck to their guns and left the setting alone, that would be one thing. But they didn't. 4th edition upped the tech level, and all I'm saying is that I like that version better for a variety of reasons - not the least of which is that it mucks less with my suspension of disbelief. Yes, I can accept elves and trolls but find a cyberpunk setting without wireless jarring. It's just a personal preference. I'm a nerd!

@Misadventure Mechanically it's not super hard. I think it's more the fact that it messes with peoples' expectations. If you say "SR3" there's a certain set of assumptions. If you say "Oh we're SR3 except for X..." then you open the door to folks being like: "But what about Y, or Z, which are kinda related to X but not expressly spelled out..."

Unrelated, I'm not quite sure why anyone would pick the SR3 mechanics with a SR4 setting, since the SR4 rules are so much more streamlined. But maybe that's just me.

@Groth Magic interfering with radio signals would be in conflict with other parts of the theme, but you could improvise whatever you wanted. All I meant was that I find "stock" SR3 to be jarring because of the tech mismatch. So do a lot of people - that's why they changed it all in SR4.

@Coin - yes, I was saying Shadowrun was jarring, not Fallout. Fallout is more of an alternate history setting.

@Thenomain Fallout has a thematic reason for being low-tech, like Battlestar. SR3's reason is just "It was written in the 80s." Given that it's arguably supposed to share the same history as the real world, that makes it a little jarring.

Not as jarring as trying to play Twilight:2000 though

@tragedyjones said:

See, my issue with 1-3 edition is that it is NOT wireless. I can't get into a sci-fi game that has worse tech than my phone.

Yep. I miss playing Shadowrun, but I could never go back to 3rd ed.

@surreality said:

There are horrible ways people can overdo it on this front, but forcibly tying the hands of active players for the sake of players who (usually, barring the far more rare actual emergency) have for whatever reason gotten bored and flittered off is simply not that reasonable.

People leave all the time though for 1-2 week periods though. Illness, work, vacation... Coming back to find that everyone's been playing like they've been ICly on the Moon, or had their head stuck in the sand the whole time strikes me as equally unreasonable.

Beyond that - yeah, they're probably never coming back. My favored idle policy isn't tied to a particular login date - 30 days, 60 days, whatever - because that's usually too long. What it does though is allow concerned players to come to staff to override player agency when someone's absence is impacting their RP.

I get that lots of times players don't trust staff, don't want to bother staff, whatever. But as staff? I'd much rather get a +request from Jane at the 3 week point saying "I want to assume Bob went to help his sick aunt in Cleveland" and allow everyone to RP "What about Bob" with the confidence of a staff-backed ruling. That strikes me as far better than waiting till Bob returns 8 weeks later and watching the drama of conflicting assumptions ensue.

But that's just me. Everyone does it differently.

@ThatGuyThere said:

You have a higher opinion of people the I do. I would bet dollars to donuts Bob would bitch just as much with what ever reason Jane came up with for her ICly moving on.

Oh, he can gripe about it all he wants. What matters more to me is the "player agency" thing. Jane simply can't make significant decisions about Bob's actions without Bob's permission. Saying he's been working late and neglecting his spouse so much she's ready to leave him is significant.

Now if he's been gone long enough, it falls under the game's idle policy, so that's a slightly different scenario. On my games, my idle policy is structured to favor the folks left behind.

Edit Also how do you enforce that. You as staff can say Jane can't leave Bob because he is absent, are you going to monitor her scenes on why she left Bob to make sure of that?

In this particular (silly) example, I would make it clear to Jane's player that Bob was, in fact, not absent. So she can choose to RP telling people that he was, which makes her a liar (and heck, might make some interesting RP) or she could come up with some other justification for why she left Bob and adjust her RP accordingly.

@Ide The trouble is that - as you can see from this thread - people have differing definitions on what constitutes "good" RP and what may or may not improve it. Just as in the real world, people enjoy different kinds of writing - or enjoy something despite the writing. I have no issue with Halicron's list as a "Here's what I think makes good RP." But I wouldn't play on a game that tried to force me into a particular writing style.

@Sonder Same. I don't often see folks getting into conflict over things like Halicron's rules spell out. It's not something I would ever choose to regulate.

@Sammi Why? I mean, if players aren't being outright horrible to each other, I don't really care what specific RP guidelines they follow.

@ThatGuyThere said:

Also I wonder just how would staff enforce a relationship reverting back to what it was. It might sound alright on principle but how would it be enforced.

It's something that has to be handled on a case-by-case basis, but I can give a hypothetical example.

Bob has vanished again. Poor Jane, his IC spouse, is sick of this nonsense and wants to move on. She RPs that Bob has been absent a lot ICly, and uses this as justification for breaking up with him.

Bob returns and takes exception to this. He wouldn't avoid his wife! It's not fair of her to have RPed him being gone all the time. He wants it retconned. They can't work it out, so they come to staff.

If Bob had only been gone for two weeks, I would tend to side with Bob here. If he had been gone for a month, I would tend to side with Jane. But it's all very subjective. Either way, somebody walks away unhappy.

And btw, in either case Jane could've avoided the conflict by coming up with an internal justification for Jane wanting to move on, rather than making it have anything to do with a presumed IC reason for Bob's OOC absence.

@ThatGuyThere Oh, I thought you meant this as a general rule (which I have seen on some games) and not just if they vanished without a word.

Regarding the vanishing: I can sympathize. I've been OOCly abandoned by all sorts of close relations - siblings, spouses, BFFs... too many to count. If they never come back I guess it doesn't matter much. But two weeks seems a little quick to assume any significant change to a relationship. A month, sure, and I would back that up as staff if anybody came to me about it. But two weeks is too soon IMHO. YMMV.

@ThatGuyThere said:

@Roz
This bugs me. Unless you make arrangements with me before hand, if we are not RPing then your character is not seeing mine. I don't care what their previous relationship is. If it is not happening on screen our characters are not seeing each other.

Sorry, that bugs me just as much. Your character inhabits the IC world 24/7/365. It is absurd to say that if it wasn't RPed it didnt happen. Coworkers, squadmates, roommates, significant others, etc. should be assumed to see each other with reasonable frequency.

@Lithium Exactly! You get into a conflict of agency that then staff must resolve. Which could be avoided by either having a pre-arranged agreement (as @surreality suggested awhile back) or involving staff as soon as you need to start making potentially-controversial assumptions about the behavior of someone else's character.

Edit to add: This isn't black and white. Assuming I see you every day and nothing exciting happens is probably not so controversial. Assuming you've suddenly started avoiding your spouse/BFF/etc. probably is.

@Lithium Except if it's your sister/spouse/employer/boyfriend/BFF you "feel" is avoiding you, and they then assert that they ICly see you every day. Then you look a little strange.

@Ganymede said:

In your examples, however, Sam's decisions affect Ingrid.

There's a difference between making a OOC decision that affects Ingrid and making an IC decision for Ingrid.

Example of the former: I don't feel like RPing with you, so we need to work this out off-camera.

Example of the latter: You don't feel like RPing with me, so I'm just gonna assume your character is out of town/sick/working late/avoiding me without asking you.

@Arkandel said:

So how is Bob, @faraday? Where the hell is Bob, huh? Where is he?

Haven't seen him. If you do, let him know I'm going to kick his butt for causing so much drama