Posts made by faraday

The whole "posing in contradiction with your skills" thing is not unique to social conflict. You get it all the time in any sort of skill-based roleplay, whether it's someone trying to fake playing a doctor or a soldier. It works both ways, too -- someone with RL knowledge letting that bleed over into their character, or someone without any knowledge trying to fumble their way through and making a mess of it. I think it's just more glaring in social situations because a) social situations make up, what, 90% of MU scenes? and b) we are all skilled to some degree in socialization, making our BS-meters more sensitive.

To tie back to what @Thenomain said, this is where the lack of a central authority or social contract bites games. You don't see it as much in ST-ed scenes because the ST has the authority to be all: "Yeah, no, there's no way that argument is going to convince the guard.." And you don't see it on consent games as much because the social contract says "If you want to convince my character of something, you need to get me, the player, on board with why that's a cool story."

@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.

@cobaltasaurus We (well, at least I - and I'm fairly confident the others as well) were just trying to encourage you. Do whatever works!

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

I wouldn't say '...if I win, then you are persuaded'. I'm more of the flavor of '..if I win, then what I am saying/doing probably appeals to you, maybe more than it usually would' and then let you take it from there.

I agree with you. In fact, the BSGU rule on social rolls is almost exactly what you just described. Yet "if I win, then you are persuaded" is exactly what many folks (on this thread and every other time this topic comes up) seem to want.

The presumption is that if you don't allow your character to be conned, then you're a Cheating McCheater, even if you have good reason. And that folks who prefer to control their character's thoughts (i.e. the agency argument) are only interested in "rolling up characters who are perfect at everything". That's just flat-out, demonstrably wrong.

There are bad actors on both sides - the "I'm going to force-roll seduction against you" skeeves and the "nah nah you can't intimidate me no matter what you roll or what the circumstances" nitwits. But painting everyone who favors a certain playstyle with the "bad actor" brush is wrong. (and just to be clear - I'm not saying you did that; I'm just clarifying my original point.)

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

One is still only going to go as far as makes sense for their character's IC limits/knowledge base.

This right here is the core of the issue. The two 'sides' of this seemingly-endless debate can be summarized (IMHO) as:

• Defender should set those limits because they understand their character and their knowledge/boundaries/personality/history/predilections/etc.
• Defenders can't be trusted to set those limits because they have an incentive to come up with even the thinnest excuse to avoid the consequences of a roll.

There's also the issue of the way social conflict is resolved. Human behavior is complex, and trying to boil it down to "roll Persuasion vs Wits with some vague modifier and if I win then you're persuaded" is as utterly nonsensical as trying to model physical combat with "roll Firearms vs Dex with some vague modifier and if I win then you're dead."

No sane gamer would accept the latter, but many argue that people who refuse to accept the former are just cheaters who can't bear to lose, deserving of mockery. It's absurd and insulting.

@cobaltasaurus said in Development Thread: Sacred Seed:

Not for me. I don't really learn anything by taking other people's code. I've looked at the Arx code countless of times, but for the most part I go "...........????"

It sounds like you're talking about something different than what @Roz is saying. It's not about looking at code. I can stare at an engine all day long and never get anywhere. It's only once you start taking the thing apart and putting it back together that you really start to understand it.

It's the process of going from "......????" to "okay what does that function do" to "well, let's see what happens when I tweak this little thing" to "oh, so that's what that does" to "huh, now why did they do that" ... and so on.

This is a well-demonstrated and even researched as a very effective way to learn software. Often even moreso than ground-up tutorials. YMMV of course - everyone learns differently - but you might get more out of it with a slightly different approach.

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

It's not weather you 'like' them or not. Social Rolls are part of the game as written.

And the effects of social rolls are governed by the GM's interpretation of what should and shouldn't even be possible given the situation at hand. Those are actually the rules as written, and that is the key piece missing from the argument that social rolls are a black and white "play by the rules" issue.

But again, we've been over this here and here and here and those were just a couple dedicated threads, not even counting all the side tangents on various other threads.

So to @Ganymede's original question - you'll never get people to agree. Just make the game you want and folks will self-select to play or not play.

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

No, Social Stats aren't 'magic powers' but people who lose dice challenges (Example: Intimidation to get somone to back down from a fight.) and then do whatever they want anyhow are called assholes and cheaters.

Do we really have to do the "if you dislike social stats you're an a-hole and a cheater" argument again? It's not about ignoring dice, it's about disagreeing about what the rolls represent. The whole "you can't kill a dragon with a toothpick no matter how well you roll" silliness. We've gone round on this one literally in circles on at least three or four threads that I can think of. Maybe we can just skip to the end where everyone leaves in a huff and save ourselves some effort?

@ganymede said in Paragraphs, large scenes and visibility:

@arkandel

To ride on that, I vastly prefer it when combat scenes are handled with just dice, if that's applicable, and no poses. Poses can be done later. Focus on the mechanics; worry about the RP later.

I think that depends on whether you’re aiming for combat RP or whether the combat is just a bump in the overall plot.

BSGU would’ve been pretty lame if every combat was resolved with some rolls and a summary pose from everyone

@zombiegenesis Yeah, no server is perfect for every game. It's important to fit the one that meets your needs the best. Sometimes it's definitely better to work with a blank slate than to try to adapt an existing set of code that doesn't quite match your vision. I will point out, though, that Ares is still in active development and many things (including some of the ones I know you had issues with) have been addressed in recent months.

@Misadventure @magee101 AresMUSH is a server, like PennMUSH/TinyMUX/Rhost/Evennia. It doesn't care about skill system.

Ares comes with my FS3 skills and combat system installed by default, but that is just a plugin, easily disabled.

Alternate plugins are already available for Fate, Cortex, FFG Genesys/Star Wars, and a simple comic-like traits system. These can be easily installed.

The effort to implement another RPG system is largely dependent upon the complexity of said system (which is true in pretty much any codebase). Fate was pretty easy to code. FFG was a pain. With systems like WoD and D20, it's not the die roller that's the kicker, it's all the rules about the feats/powers/spells/etc. A wide array of Ares coding tutorials and support is available of anyone wishing to implement such a thing.

@ganymede said in Star Wars Stand Alone - Staff Sought:

Faraday's involved? Check.

Thanks for the vote of confidence , but just to be clear (and not inadvertently steal credit from the folks doing the real work!) - I'm not involved in the actual game itself. I'm just helping them get Ares set up (at least on a trial basis to see if they want to go that way) and hammering out any issues with my FFG system.

@skew The discord is in private beta right now while I get the hang of how it works and stuff. I'll PM an invite. Anyone who's using (or interested in using) Ares can message me for an invite as well. It'll be public eventually.

@alexraymond Sounds neat. FYI, AresMUSH supports the FFG Star Wars system out of the box (along with lots of other stuff). The FFG system hasn't been field-tested on a real game yet, but I'd definitely offer what support I could for anyone trying it.

@goblin said in Tomorrow is the Deadline....:

Every four year over here, every eligible voter gets sent a voting card.

From a practical standpoint, there is no central roster in the US of "eligible voters", especially considering that felons lose their right to vote for some period of time.
Without voter registration, the government would have to create such a roster. Otherwise you don't know who to send voter cards to.

So why don't they just do that and simplify the process? Apart from the general inefficiency of the US gov't and the distaste for a national ID system -- as @Roz says, many believe it's a way to disenfranchise people under the guise of preventing voter fraud.

Time article on the history of voter registration.

@ganymede said in Good TV:

Solo is under-rated. If you watch it as a heist movie, as opposed to a space opera movie, it is pretty fucking sweet.
Similarly, Rogue One is an excellent war movie.

Star Wars is a universe in which you can tell many different kinds of stories. Too many SW fans seem to think only one kind of story is valid, though, and much drama results.

(Like those bemoaning Rebels for being too simplistic and not gritty enough. Guys, it's a kids cartoon.)

@ganymede said in NOLA 2: Back in the Vieux:

I concur, but that does not necessarily mean that a game cannot remind players that they can engage and create and that staff will facilitate that.

Absolutely. Enabling and encouraging players to engage is great. I'm just saying don't be surprised when a significant percentage of the players just don't, either because they lack confidence, lack trust in staff, or lack the experience in building stories for themselves.

@sunnyj Not necessarily. A MUSH needs a critical mass of players to function, because people are turned away when they can't find RP (even bar RP) when they feel like playing. That's why sandboxes often sputter and die.

@sunnyj said in NOLA 2: Back in the Vieux:

@ganymede Oh, for sure! What I mean is that the more the community of a game puts on PLAYERS that THEY need to ENGAGE and CREATE, I think the more a lot of these lazy players will just wake up to the fact that 'Wow. Maybe I should, I don't know. do something with my time here.'

My experience is that the more a community puts on players to engage and create, the more those unmotivated players just leave or spend all their time in the OOC area whining about how there isn't anything to do.

(I don't think it's laziness in a lot of cases, but more a clash of expectations. They come from video games or TTRPGs where someone else doles out the story and they just get to participate in it. The idea of creating the story themselves is a foreign - and often intimidating - concept.)

@twinprince said in How to: make your poses less repetitive:

As to not having descs set and/or not wanting to read a desc... Something about the fact that the entire type of game is based solely on reading and writing really leaves me unsure how to fix someone... Not wanting to read.

I don't want to go off into a 'to desc or not to desc' tangent, but I prefer a more organic way of incorporating peoples' descriptions than a traditional static desc. I think this is also a nice way to shake up your poses, so it's on-topic here.

I mean, think about when's the last time you were reading a novel and it just paused in the middle to give you a paragraph-long dump of how the character looks. It just doesn't happen.

Instead you get these morsels doled out over time. So if you pose something like "Mary brushed her long red hair back behind her ear as she took a seat at the bar..."or "Mary removed her leather jacket and draped it over the back of the chair as she sat..." - not only is it more interesting than "Mary sits at the bar" but it incorporates important details about her description. Then it doesn't matter so much whether someone read your @-desc.