Posts made by GangOfDolls

DR is national larp, where individual chapters buy the licensing rights and run their local games. This leads to a mix of quality- some games are plot heavy and some games are super plot light and its a lot of larp combat all weekend with not much else.

The premise is interesting but having personally tried DR, I don't think it executes very well. This isn't really premise related. It's more that the franchise has been around a few years now and inertia has kind of mired it in its problems.

The three main difficult bars for entry for DR are (imo):

1. U R Trash Mob: The way XP and sheets work in DR is that older PCs who got into the ground floor start of local chapters have way, way, wayyyyy more skills than people who are starting out. As a result, it in reality takes 1-2 years before your PC can be effective at many things because there are already PCs who are established and way more effective (sheets and points wise) at the thing you want to do. Some people are understandably not interested in sinking 2 years+ of weekends, game fees, and sleepless nights getting rained on for the pleasure of all that. Others? They're not playing for those reasons so they don't care. YMMV.

2. Starting Solo Sucks: It's possible. People do it. But its harder and its not fun. Survival in the game is a single burden, which can really break your experience in terms of combat and resources. But the way DR functions is that it lends itself and is much more supportive of group concepts. Single/solo players often have a hard time getting integrated into a larger group, which isn't unlike some of the problems people sometimes have on MU*s where group concepts get better returns on their fun and efforts. You can reach out out to DR players and try to get meshed into a group before you start playing which tends to be a little better.

3. No Sleep Till Monday: DR (and a lot of larps) thrive on boffer combat. DR tends to like to send constant waves of zombie NPC mobs at players all night and through most of the day. The result is - you get very little sleep for 36+ hours. For some people, that heightens the experience but for others, its pretty miserable and especially so if you don't know how to fight, so you're being constantly terrified and relying on other people to save you and not sleeping. It's not a game that's set-up for people with steady 9-5 gigs who have to show up productive and awake on a Monday, unless you're able to take the Monday after off to recover. There are certainly people who manage around this issue but a lot of larping is physical discomfort: wet, cold, no sleep, etc. People who aren't as familiar with weekend larping are less aware of the physical demands and its not really a game that has a lot for people to do who have serious physical or health limitations.

3a. Bonus Mention - Unsafe Combat: I've boffer larped for a long time and I also belong to Amtgard. We hit each other with padded sticks super hard and then take each other out for beers. But we're safe about how we hit each other with padded sticks and DR combat the last time I played was not safe. Even though boffer weapons are foam padded and less likely to do any real damage, you can still fuck up someone's world if you hit them in too hard in the face. There was a lot of charging, shield bashing, machine gunning, full contact swings (you can hear the sword smacking against a shield or a person and in larp combat you are swinging toooo hard if that's happening), and people getting hit in the face, eyes, mouth, and junk which are all places you shouldn't be hitting people. Also, there was cabin fighting and people were falling out of bunks and hitting their heads on surfaces in the adrenaline panic that results. I'm told efforts have been made to stop setting up combats that have people doing this but that was enough to not make me come back.

This is all not to say that you shouldn't try this but I think its better to know what you're getting into at the drop. I think all larping is about managing personal expectations (like MU*ing) where the premise of the game needs some help. I didn't like DR but you may really like it. I love larping, and there are lot of other games in the area if this one doesn't work out.

I find that pacing is individual both for the game and also the PC you're attempting some kind of relationship with...

I know a lot of people would hope that in the best case scenario things come together organically but often, with one or both of you having jobs/partners/kids/work travel/housework on the weekends, etc., it's in the end better to have some kind of OOG conversation about expectations and availability.

It doesn't always work out, even with a conversation. Life happens or less mildly, the conversation doesn't end up matching the reality of behavior. So, I guess the best thing I can offer is:

Have a Plan A for you and the person you're playing with about what's going on, when, and how much. Have a Plan B so that your PC isn't jilted into unplayable status if the relationship runs its course too soon, the other player ghosts on the game or your PC, or OOG drama results in a sudden IG end to things.

@Ganymede

A fair point. I'm pretty open (perhaps unhelpfully) to most things. I'm a little shy on the notion of massively multi-player places like Arx, only because I don't have the time to keep up with the pace at Arx between professional and personal obligations and not having a job that allows me to play from work. It's a nice gig if you can get it but those games that move at a breakneck pace just leave me feeling left behind. So, seeing as there's no reason to create a reason to feel bad - I'm just not a good fit for that kinda game. The concept of Arx sounds great, otherwise.

Did that replacement for Kushiel's Debut ever happen? I was kinda hoping it might just to try that world out but I'm guessing that it didn't come together, which happens.

Without really intending to, I sorta went and got super life busy and now its like 4 months later. Also, I was a little burned out on MUing if I'm honest. The combining result is that I stopped logging in here and I stopped logging into the one game that I was half-heartedly poking at (Fate's Harvest).*

So, I've read through the forums here and from what I can generally cull -- is there not a lot of up/new games or are there but things are kind of spread out and in their own genre corners?

Most of the MU/MUD advertising sites are wildly inaccurate at best about what's really active, so I tend not to rely on what they say is going on in MU* land.

So, what are the games that are currently active and/or new?

*It was me, not FH. I had just hit that point where I just didn't have it in me to start over on a new game.

A primer:

CS runs off Lambda. Though a heavily modified, largely bastardized version of Lambda. There are several generations of wiz bit coders involved in it at this point. I have no idea how it looks lately as a former wiz bit coder but much of the core game features are legacy from decades ago, so it seems to be okay?

It's a MOO, which you don't see much of anymore. Ghostwheel and Diversity University were also MOOs if anyone remember those places (I believe they are both long over). DU wasn't even a game. It was ... some weird collegiate sort of... I don't even know.

Functionally however, much of it appears to be MUD oriented in how automation commands must functions from combat to the economy to movement on grid using IC transportation and cyber implants.

There is RP. It's hit or miss, as has been always the case. Some staff groups required more of it, some staff groups cared way less so plot is also kind of hit or miss depending on the staff and their level of interest in running it. There are pockets of players who RP and run effectively PRPs for each other. Much of the RP is akin to Nordic style larp in that you put a bunch of competing factions in the game who are living in a slum walled off from the corporate paradise that San Diego in the future has become (now called New Carthage) and they tend to make trouble for each other.

There are always twinks and people who want to slash and hack. You can avoid them or engage them. It's generally easier to avoid them than you'd think.

Application Tiers: The more time and effort you put into a Tier, the more stuff you get to start with. Tier 1 is basically a non-CG, jump in and play situation. You get like a minimum of credits, a clone/no clone, and nothing. There is no application. Tier 2 is medium effort application, you write a BG of small length and/or answer a survey (I can't remember its been a while) and then you get a better clone/more creds/some gear/middling starting stuff . Tier 3 is effort required application that staff is obligated to read and approve or not and you get even better stuff, including sometimes an IG job and an apartment depending on what it is you're trying to play on Tier 3.

I was on the staff when Tiers were first introduced. I don't know if they've been modified since but it sounds pretty much the same.

Clones: It's hard to permanently die on CS. You do have to pay for the upkeep of a clone on the game. When you die, you wake up in your new clone body (as per Cyberpunk genre) having no memory of anything that happened to you between your last paid update to record your memories and the time of your death. The better the clone, the better your chances you'll keep coming back after you die which is why death isn't as big of a deal on the game and it tends to attract a less risk averse crowd. Your clone can fail based on a random roll and if that happens, you're kinda boned. The extent of the failure and the quality of your clone can make it so that your PC is a vegetable and its better to just have them killed off. Less unfortunate failures have permanent negative changes to your PC. A high quality clone failure is pretty rare. A cheap clone fails kind of a lot.

CS isn't for everyone.
The learning curve can be really tough.
It's been around since 1994.

--Former Wiz

I agree but there are plenty of people who jump into game themes without having read the books or watched the TV show. I can say for certain that about half of the people I encountered The 100 had never even bothered with the TV show and then were taken by surprise some of the game content. The 100 wasn't nearly as dark by half as The Magicians, so I don't think its a good idea to assume that everyone has bothered.

And there are players, when left to their devices, have a completely different idea of what dark and intense means.

I'm not saying don't do it; I'm saying clearly label what's on the tin.

@Auspice said in Magicians Game:

• I intend to really play on the darker, more intense themes of the books.

I'm interested but I'd like to know what you mean by dark and intense, as dark and intense for these books means child sexual abuse of one character and the detailed raped of another character. The books are pretty good but they don't tiptoe up to dark, so I think this is a kind of thing that you may want to consider being very upfront about in terms of what you explicitly intend to include as a dark and intense. This is information I think is fair warning in terms of players knowing what they're getting into and deciding if they want to wade into.

@surreality

I know someone with both the Sabbat and Cam symbols on each arm. And another person with all the Garou tribe symbols.

I know some nerds.

You could go hardcore with it and get them tattooed on you.

@Thenomain

Right, totally. I don't think a pure motivation is equal to correct one.

Your post reminded me of that line from Into The Woods:

"Nice is not good."

So, purity for me is that the character's motivation is his own- no matter where the needle jumps on the morality scale- and isn't so much a projection of the player just trying to obstruct someone else's fun in the game. That's not a story, that's just being dick.

@surreality

I agree with this a lot.

That said, alot of my experience with antagonism including a mild form of it this week didn't come with negotiation. I think if it had, then it wouldn't have occurred the way it did but a lot of antagonism on games that I've seen is NIMBYism on the part of the player. They just don't want something to happen on the game, often irrationally because they equate it happening to a sense of loss.

I think if that player who is having that NIMBY reflex in reaction to something asked more questions out of character and negotiated the situation it might be avoided or at least made somewhat interesting.

Or it just hangs a flashing neon sign around the person you should just avoid in the future.

I think @Lisse24 , @Ghost , and @Thenomain have called out the same thing in different ways, which I happen to agree with:

Antagonism is best when its motivations in the character are pure.

And much of antagonism might maaaaaybe start as character pure motivations, it rapidly dissolves into motivations in the player being less pure and those lines getting utterly blurry if not outright motivated in OOC butthurt.

Much of antagonism as I've witnessed it recently are players through their characters being big time, small time dicks and taking obstructionist actions in game that have no end. They don't want to move a story along, they just want to stop something in its tracks. They just want to stomp on a toy that doesn't belong to them. They mostly play checkers moves motivated by out of game spite instead of chess.

Stuff I Listen To Not Already Mentioned (I think):

Why Oh Why - a podcast about love and dating where it meets technology

The Vanished - profiles an inactive/cold case of a missing person each week

Terrible, Thanks For Asking - a podcast about literally having a terrible time in life. The woman who started it miscarried her second child, lost her father to cancer, and then her husband to aggressive brain cancer in the space of the same 2 months. It's good but holy shit, this can be one epic downer of a podcast.

Horizon Line - Real stories about mavericks, explorers, and people who have pioneered something even at great personal risk.

Up and Vanished - podcast about the Tara Grinstead missing person's case. The podcast helped lead to 2 arrests in the 12 year old cold case a few weeks back.

Radiolab: More Perfect - A history of the US Supreme Court and cases heard

Blabbermouth: weekly podcast put on by Dan Savage and other editors from The Stranger, they talk about PNW/Seattle stuff as well as national issues

Death, Sex, & Money - a podcast about these three difficult to talk about topics

Radiolab - science!

Girl on Guy with Aisha Tyler - the actress who voices Lana on Archer, she interviews actors and famous people. She's a gamer and a drinker and a PoC. I love her.

Dan Carlin's Hardcore History - super deep dive on events in history. It's really well done but very slow to release episodes.

I think there's a key element to the TWD scenario @ghost is also talking about and it loops back to the character death discussion. And that is:

With only a few core exceptions, most characters over the arc of TWD are dead or will die. I suspect that when the series ends (if it ever dies), there may be only one or two core characters out of the handful that have been steadfastly central to the narrative that will remain standing at the very end.

Survival tropes where successful are somewhat successful when you commit to two things:

1. Don't get comfortable, nothing is going to stay static.
2. No one is going to survive this, so don't get super invested.

I'll add one to @wtfe 's list:

• If its not a death you have control over, it rarely comes with much payoff. In the least case, if your PC dies because you horribly botch a roll that results in death it sort of undoes all the IC work you put in (and the actual OOC hours) there's kind of nothing of substance to that death. Random death from above just feels like a big fuck you from above. If its due to PvP conflict, that's even worse because your PC wouldn't be dead at all if the other player hadn't declared that action* and all that work has been pointlessly cut off at the knees.

*Unless you were a real asshole in game and went out of your way to give PCs no other option ever and basically made the game a hell and a half, then your PC may deserve their shit getting pushed in but one hopes staff would deal with it before people literally take up arms to improve the situation.

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

@GangOfDolls

For the record, I wasn't critiquing that there WAS yoga, just that as I understood it, the town in No Return became so sheltered at one point that it was getting near Gilmore Girls Star's Hollow levels. I apologize if you felt slighted by the yoga mention. I don't know you, and it wasn't about you. Just about...the setting and stuff.

I'll let the topic get back on track nao

Yeah, that's cool. I felt compelled to say something because nerds. Also, we got kicked out of Stars Hollow by staff because they didn't want anyone having private builds anymore via plot. And then they stuck us in a summer camp. So. Yeaaaaah. Anyway.

I'm assuming you're speaking on No Return, which lets not paint lipstick on sweating dynamite, was pretty terrible but I do want to set the record straight(er) on a few things:

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

1. PLAYING HOUSE: that eventually resulted in plenty of scheduled yoga lessons and movie nights.

I played the PC who was "teaching yoga" though 1) I never actually taught yoga in in character because I would have fallen asleep at the keyboard the idea is so fucking boring and 2) that wasn't really what she was doing but the +bb posts maintained a certain atmosphere around misdirection. I guess it worked!

That said, there were definitely a lot of movie nights, indepth scenes about what color to paint the baby's room, and cheerful community building social events that I generally skipped because I wasn't looking for this, either.

2. I GUESS I'LL SCAVENGE?:

The scavenge system was at least better than people tripping over huge cashes of C4, BUK missile launchers, or infinite cans of perfectly good pears. But it also took over the game in a weird, resource dominating way in that it if you had it in your personal stash - there was no incentive to interact with anyone else, which justified people to continue to shack it up and ignore the apocalypse outside. Most of the plot in the beginning had something to do with resources and if you wanted something to do in game, you were going to have jump through the hoops of scavenging 99 pieces of twine to build a dinglehopper. And because staff wouldn't facilitate that any way but obtusely, it was hella annoying to have to go find these things knowing that Ella, Brick, and their NPC child were holed up in their build with all the twine and wouldn't even be bothered to pretend other people on this game existed.

3. HIGH DANGER, LOW MORTALITY: On one such game, cancer was diagnosed, operated on, and eventually cured without much electricity, access to imagery machines, important medicine, and proper tools.

Unless this happened on No Return's failed spin off, I'm pretty sure you're talking about the staff PC who had a brain tumor. The whole concept was pretty terrible, partly because it was a staff PC so it was way more precious than it should have ever been and also in true Phoenix's MO, he just griefed everyone constantly for zero interesting or passingly logical reasons. Anyway, there was talk of trying to operate but the player of the doctor was more sensible than perhaps given credit and decided there was zero chance this was going to be successful and wasn't interested in going through the motions of total failure. And dying on the operating table while a reasonable expectation is also a fairly boring narrative for the dying PC. So instead, it got dragged out even longer and there was an insufferable funeral social scene because ded staff PC ... which many people also skipped.

4. OMG ASSHOLE CHARACTER

I understand this but I also don't, in part because I RPed with some of the asshole PCs and actually we had a lot of fun because at the end of it, we had other things in game we wanted to do besides obsess over who got a puppy from the NPC dog that had puppies. I can't stress how big of a deal this was for several players- if they got a puppy, what was it named, and what did it look like and and and to the point where the owner of the NPC dog was sorry they'd ever mentioned it as IC flavor. Anyway.

I think though the problem with post-apoc/zombie/dystopian wasteland games is that most of the conflict is not environmental. It's Other Groups who want to kill us and eat our faces. And there is, for a certain fan of this genre a reluctance to want to play with PCs that look way too edgelord for their own good because they are often attached to players who are here to pick lethal PvP conflicts with players who are not here to kick some PC's head in over a cantaloupe. There is a small population attached to these games that does attract the NO RULES, NO RULES, YOUR RUINED FUN IS MY CAKE and many of these games are not good at screening these assholes out or corralling them into being useful in their otherwise terrible motives. Or in the case of NR, passive aggressively encouraging it. Good times.

@Thenomain

Ehnnnn.

I think it depends ultimately on storyline taste and personal asthetic, so grain of salt but I think this is Humble Bundle is 1/2 okay stuff and 1/2 total crap.

I find Locke & Key to be kind of vastly overrated. I know that people like Joe Hill because he's Stephen King's son and Heart Shaped Box got a lot of play but fwiw, I think they could deliver a much tighter story in much fewer issues. L&K feels lack a money grab to me.

The 30 Days of Night Series (original installments) was actually a good turn on the vampire tropes. The later stuff taken over by other writers was kind of lame re-tread.

The rest of it kinda gets a meh out of me, like it won't be hateable but it won't change your life, either.

Other titles I would suggest:

Paper Girls: Has a Stranger Things vibe in a good way (though this series started a year before ST aired on Netflix), set in Ohio in the mid-late 80s with 12 year old girls with a paper route with weird things happening about the subdivision. The writers have a good lock on what its like to be 12 in the suburbs in the 1980s.

Sex Criminals: 2 people realize that when they orgasm, they can stop time. Shenanigans ensue. There's also an accurate and unvarnished but ultimately human take on what its like to have ADHD and major depression and function in the world, which is not something you see in comics a whole lot.

Revival: The dead are coming back to life in Wisconsin. It's a bit like The Returned, if you've ever watched the US or French version in terms of vibe and atmosphere.

The Umbrella Academy: Quirky turn on what happens when you raise superhero kids to be superhero adults but with a lot less hugs and Professor Xavier. Also by the dude from My Chemical Romance, who might be a better comic writer than screamo singer.

East of West: Post-apocalypse, NWO dytopian setting with The Four Horsemen as little kids. The writing is very good and a good ethnic mix, no one is brown and magical which is pretty fucking awesome for me.

Kabuki: David Mack's art is beautiful and the story holds up even though the series came out 15 years ago. Cyberpunk/NWO themes.

The Wicked and The Divine: I tried to read this and hated it. But! I know so many people who love this series and the writing is also really good, I think I'm the one with the problem but we like what we like and don't what we don't.

Wormwood: Gentleman Demon: Wormwood is a little worm demon, he takes over corpses and sort of trundles around in them. He fights crime! Also, its pretty funny.

@Faceless said in General Video Game Thread:

Ghost Recon Wildlands

I got to play test this at Pax. I totally thought I was griefing my friend at the console station to the left of me and I turned out that I kept shooting some nine year old's toon over and over, instead.

I'm a bad person.

It was fun though!

White Wolf when it was White Wolf loved to go after people for sharing their IP online. But they seemed to leave games online alone, even if they were sharing the material at the same time. Does anyone understand the difference in their reasoning?

ETA: I hit enter too soon.