Posts made by faraday

@derp said in Who Holds the Reigns:

Never again. I know players will hate it, they want to aspire to the pinnacles of everything, but it's my solid and firm belief that PCs being in positions to actually control other PCs with nobody above them to oversee those actions leads to misery all around...

That's pretty much where I've landed. I've seen mostly badness from having PCs at the top of spheres:

• They disappear, resulting in a revolving door of leadership.
• They don't do the job (often because it's no fun). You may have to "fire" them, leading to strife.
• They don't handle power well, leading to strife.
• Other players get jealous, leading to strife.

There are, of course, exceptions. I've seen some gems of PC facheads through the years. But it's a rare player who can handle the responsibility well and stick around. Most often, it ends badly.

@pyrephox said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

and one of the things I like to do is take a look at the other character's wiki or finger to see something I can hang a scene hook off of that makes our conversation a little LESS 'hello random person' - ... There's nothing wrong with wanting a scene that has 'purpose', but that means, you know, put in the effort to build the scene with purpose.

Exactly. I'm also not a particular fan of "random people with no reason to interact meet in random public place to talk about the weather." It's awkward. It's boring (for me personally; not judging those who enjoy it).

But it's really not that hard to find a reason for a scene. Even the Superman example given earlier - Clark is a journalist. Journalists are great RP-drivers because they can concoct a meaningful reason to talk to almost anyone. Clark may be his alter-ego but it's still a big part of his life. I wouldn't see those relationships and interactions as meaningless just because he's not wearing his cape at the time.

Jurassic Park (the first one) is another good example. There are a number of scenes that don't move the plot along in a direct way, but are important for building relationships between the characters so that they care about each other (and you, the audience, cares about them) when they finally do get around to being chased by dinosaurs. Those non-action scenes aren't pointless; they're essential.

There will always be writers and there will always be gamers, so I believe there will always be a future for the intersection of writing and gaming.

Will it be MMO huge? No, of course not, but RPG crossing play by post boasts 40k PBP players, there are tons of MUDers, Storium has another few thousand... so I don't think text-based roleplay is quite in the realm of steam engines either.

@lotherio said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

But like I say, I and plenty others have played modern, no fantasy (no magic, no monsters, no nothing beyond what is in reality already) and are okay in social RP. Whether its just to pass time between the next life emergency/fire at the hospital or to plan some save the whale event. Its not for everyone, but some people like it.

This. On Battlestar games there was plenty of hanging-out between missions. Often it was just kibitzing in the lounge or gym, but it could also be training, debriefs, maintenance, etc. On my western games there were picnics, horse races, business deals, ranch work... the list goes on.

I'm personally not a huge fan of random people who have no reason to interact just meeting in the coffee shop/bar/park/whatever, but social RP can take many forms.

@lotherio said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

For some people, this RP would be boring however.

That's my point. Not that you can't do it, or shouldn't do it, just that the appeal would be different and narrower.

Look at Western games. Sure there are some gunfighter PCs and the like, but a lot of PCs are just townsfolk. They're content with costume drama and romance interspersed with the occasional bank robbery or blizzard. There's nothing wrong with that at all.

But the overwhelming majority of RPG games are based around settings filled with action and adventure (pirates! spies! soldiers!) because that's what a lot of people are looking for. It is difficult to sustain a steady stream of action in most modern settings.

@thebigd said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

Yes, yes it does. The medic performing CPR on you may just be having a regular work day, but to you, that person is your knight in shining armor. It's all about perspective.

Of course there are everyday heroes, but as a medic iRL I can assure you that most responses would be pretty dull to RP. A single season of a show like Chicago Fire is basically everything exciting that happened in every fire department across the US in the span of a year. I think it would be hard to sustain a MU like that. (But if somebody wanted to do it - more power to them.)

@de-villefort said in MUs That We Would Love To Make (But Won't):

it makes a boring RPG world.

I think you may have a narrower definition of "RPG World" that some of us. I think what you're maybe getting at is that RPGs are often focused on heroic (or anti-heroic) people running around having adventures for months or years on end. That doesn't exactly happen every day in the real world.

But not all RPGs or MUs need that same hook. You absolutely could do one set in the modern world, and people have. A CSI MU or Grey's Anatomy MU may have its challenges and a more narrow audience than something more adventure-driven like Game of Thrones or Star Wars, but so what? As long as the people involved are having fun, that's all that matters.

For Mac, Atlantis is awesome.

@raeras said in OC Superhero Discussion:

My current intention was to just do FS3 with the Traits system - but I'm willing to read over some of the options presented here, though I'm no coder so I'd need an assist or I'd use the RPG plugin for Ares.

The RPG plugin is for sure an option. Traits are good if you want just generic descriptions. Clockwork also has the ESHTraits plugin if you want a bit of souped-up trait categories.

FWIW I would advise against using FS3 for a supers game. Mathematically it just doesn't scale to super-human abilities, so it falls flat if you have Hulk's strength rolling against Hawkeye's strength. If you want more geeky number explanations, see scaling in FS3 but here's the TL;DR; excerpt:

Now let’s give Charlie insane superpowers. Like “Captain America” reflexes. 20 dice vs Cate’s 7. Of course now Charlie almost always wins, but there’s still that sliver of just under 5% where Cate can beat her to a stalemate. Does that make any sense at all for a slightly-above-average human soldier going up against Captain America? No. It’s stupid.

You could, of course, do some system gymnastics around how traits trump abilities or whatever (Cap's Super Strength ability takes precedence over his 4 dice in Brawn, for instance) but it just gets weird.

@zombiegenesis said in OC Superhero Discussion:

I also think any one of these could be coded in Ares fairly easily(barring full on web/scene integration, which is the most complex part of Ares IMO). In-game character generation with in-game and web based character sheets and a basic dice system at any rate.

It depends on what you want really. Chargen is a pain to code in any MUSH for any system. It's just tedious making sure everything's set right, keeping track of points, etc. And web chargen is a crapton of work for most systems just due to the complexity of building GUI selectors.

Scene integration probably isn't much.

• If you just want to roll dice (like you tell it "roll 4d6") there's a pre-built dice plugin.
• If you want to type what to roll (like you tell it "roll Strength") you can copy the Fate plugin version and have it done in like an hour or so.
• Any more than that and you're starting to get into more complex code.

@arkandel said in Good TV:

Sometimes intentionally, other times because the writers just didn't care and everything was so episodic.

As I understand it, it was more a deliberate thing to keep things episodic so viewers could drop in and out more easily, and therefore the show had better chances in syndication. It was a big thing back then, and took a long time to give way to more overarching story arcs.

@ganymede said in Testing the Waters for Battletech Interest:

I mean, I know you can do ship-to-ship fighting in FS3/Ares. Shouldn’t be too difficult to modify. It won’t be the same system, maybe, but BTech is mostly awesome based on load outs and universe building.

It depends on your goals. There are several hallmarks of the BTech system that you could not do in FS3 without an obscene amount of code mods. Heat, armor, range, critical hits, death from above, just to name a few.

But if you just want to skin modern-ish tanks and call the vehicles "Mechs" and handwave a lot - sure, go for it.

Otherwise, something like MegaMek would probably be a better solution.

@lotherio said in Combat on a Mu:

Just a +attack

In most RPG systems, attacking is "just" a skill roll.

The hard part is:

• Figuring out what to roll. In many cases this involves knowing what your opponent is doing, what skills they have, etc.
• Figuring out what modifiers apply to the roll based on a given situation. Range, wounds, reach, visibility, and a billion other potential combat modifiers.
• Figuring out what should happen based on the die roll(s). Damage being the obvious result but many systems have other side effects too. Subdue attacks, etc.

The more you try to automate these things, the more complex your combat commands necessarily become.

The more you try to leave these things up to the humans, the longer it takes with OOCs back and forth trying to sort things out.

So in practical terms, there's really no such thing as "just a +attack" in any but the most simplistic hand-wavey systems.

It depends. Do you care about tracking wounds and healing? How complex is the game system you're trying to model? How often are combats likely to come up and what will the scale/scope be?

A big dogfight on a BSG game or an assault on TGG? You'd be insane NOT to have a full-fledged combat system. It'd take all day to resolve one scene and it would be a tremendous burden on your GMs and players.

A duel on a low-stakes swashbuckling game? Who needs stats at all?

So I don't think this should be up to player preference of vanilla vs. chocolate. Different games have different needs.

Thing is, I'm not even talking about oppositional/jerk-ish behavior. This is a kid who is literally in tears over math homework because there's an insurmountable wall of awful in front of them that's keeping them from reaching their goals. Or one who gets so easily overwhelmed by Big Feelings (anxiety, anger, disappointment) that they have constant meltdowns where the rational, thinking part of their brain just goes on walkabout for a little while.

Society - even family - rushes to judgment, because failures of executive functioning and emotional regulation are seen as failures of character and/or parenting. And it drives me nuts.

In other news: https://www.additudemag.com/social-media-makes-me-feel-bad-adhd-hypersensitivity

@ganymede Yeah that's really not what I said.

If your kid is struggling with a serious neurological challenge and freaking everyone's immediate response is "well maybe they're just being a jerk" or "maybe they just need more discipline"...

That's harmful.

@ganymede said in The ADD/ADHD Thread (cont'd from Peeves):

That's not even necessarily brain chemistry.
Kids can be dicks.

That kind of comment is exactly what I deal with on a daily basis by people who judge behavior without understanding the very real underlying neurological challenges often behind that behavior.

People around me: "So how do you explain then why the kids are able to do the things they like to do but don't have the discipline to do the things that are hard/distasteful for them."

ADHD. Brain chemistry.

It's like asking why a kid with dyslexia is having trouble reading. Grr.

@bluebird AresMUSH: https://aresmush.com/

You can find Ares games here: https://arescentral.aresmush.com/games

The specific tolerance for play-by-post style "asynchronous RP" will vary from game to game, though. It's more of a game culture thing; it's just that Ares has support for it baked in whereas on other MU platforms the players have to switch to a google doc or something for async RP.

You can also check out Storium, which is directly built around play-by-post style RP: https://storium.com/

@greenflashlight said in RL Anger:

Is that a danger to the firefighters, or just a waste of a drone?

https://www.faa.gov/uas/media/FAA_drones_wildfires_toolkit.pdf

Flying a drone near a wildfire is dangerous and can cost lives. When people fly
drones near wildfires, fire response agencies often ground their aircraft to avoid
the potential for a midair collision. Delaying airborne response poses a threat to
firefighters on the ground, residents and property in nearby communities, and it
can allow wildfires to grow larger...The National Interagency Fire
Center (NIFC) says it best: If You Fly, We Can’t.