To be fair, last time I checked it was easier to reverse vasectomies than tube-tying.
Also, last time I checked, it's a lot harder to convince a dude to get a vasectomy than for a woman to get her tubes tied.
I am totally on your side on this when it comes to the dominion of men, but I'm going to say that there's probably more dude-bros who need a vasectomy than women who need their tubes tied.
@crusader said:
I am compelled to address your post point-by-point for the sake of clarity, though I am loathe to do so. (I hate writing piece-meal, but there's no other way to get through your response cogently.)
- It's not my authority. I wrote the themes nearly verbatim from the book itself. I'm not pulling it out of my ass. If you don't like those themes...fine. But they're at least as equal in importance to the Shadow, which people here claim to love.
That wasn't what I was talking about. I said you haven't the authority to claim that few seem to understand the game's theme. You haven't the knowledge or expertise to make that claim. Regarding the second part, my previous post is premised on the conclusion that all of the themes raised are equally important.
- While you might find it emotionally cathartic to believe otherwise, I have nowhere claimed that any other way of interpreting the game is less acceptable or valid. I have only defended what I find acceptable and valid.
I find cathartic release in very little these days, except for a good bath and a friendly rub. You very clearly described your interpretation, and have gone to great lengths to defend it. This can be reasonably construed as considering the same interpretation more acceptable than another, if we are talking of interpretation. If otherwise, your point does little to undermine mine.
- I've already acknowledged that the title could use improving. It was done in a slap dash fashion. I'm not perfect. There's no need to keep retreading it.
If I cannot express an opinion based on the words, language, ideas, or conclusions you've previously raised, then there's little more to talk about.
- What I took issue with, was the barrage of comments that it was in violation to the 'spirit' (no pun intended) of the game. By way of response, I've fallen back on the authority of the original authors, as to which themes they gave pride of place, to show that is not the case. The people who seem to have the biggest trouble with this, are those that have pontificated the most, while later admitting 'they don't even like werewolf' and have probably never even read the theme section of the pdf.
If you take no position as to whether your interpretation is more or less acceptable than another's, then you must accept that others validly believe that your fixes would violate their interpretation of the spirit of the game. There therefore should be no need to defend your point. Yet, here we are.
- In the end, werewolf is more than any one theme. It's a constellation of themes. The pseudo Native American cosmology aspect of it is just one theme, and it's the very last theme they introduced. It's just one layer of the setting.
I concur.
- So please, scale back some of the high and mighty tone about authority, or what rights I have to declare good fun or bad fun. I'm not making any such claims.
I am writing clearly, and pointing out what I believe to be flaws in your logic, reasoning, thinking, argument, position, and writing. That I write bluntly is for the sake of parsimony and clarity.
If you don't like it when some people infer your absence of knowledge, experience, or authority, then you should stop making claims as to others' knowledge, experience, or motivations. In short: don't tell me whether someone understands something or not. I can make that evaluation on my own.
- My only 'claim', is that Werewolf 2.0, stripped of the Shadow component, makes it even less like owod werewolf, and more in line with other nwod themes of horror and the human condition. That's why I found Theno's comment that it would be more combatty to be ludicrous, since the Shadow only exists to provide an owod-type avenue of mega battles against various monsters, like Claimed/Fomori, or beshilu/banes.
Yes, removing the Shadow would make the game less like OWoD Werewolf, which I enjoy for different reasons. However, I disagree that doing so would make the game more in-line with horror and human condition themes.
Your concept of horror may be different than mine. I enjoy many different kinds of horror stories, but I lean towards classic horror, and most of those stories involves spirits, supernatural creatures, and other things that might lead to what you might call a "mega battle." That said, I rather prefer simpler stories of personal, human horror, but that doesn't mean I'd prefer to pull the Shadow from my Werewolf campaigns.
- What makes a setting, game or theme 'shallow', isn't something so ridiculous as to whether or not the Shadow or spirits are involved, or what the tribes are called. It's how the story is told. I'm surprised you of all people, can't acknowledge this. My greatest beef with the Shadow is that it's handled in such a shallow manner by so many people, and of which there is really no way around without expecting an unrealistic level of familiarity with the subject matter from all players.
First, just because a set of rules is handled poorly by ignorant or lazy players doesn't mean that rule-set is bad. To wit, Wraith: The Oblivion.
Second, you are proposing to remove parts of the game that could add other levels of horror to a game. Auspices can provide a lot of potential for horror: what if a pacifist discovered she was a Rahu? Or Tribes: what if an Iron Warden were forced to hunt down and kill her own mortal family?
I think that a skilled GM can use these elements to create stories of horror and the human condition. And I'd rather have more tool-sets and potential around than to pigeon-hole a campaign.
- A story is hurt when not all of the players are on the same page in understanding its very various elements. Whatever idealized opinion people have of nwod werewolf, the fact is, most every nwod werewolf sphere has sucked, and been anything like what the original writers could have intended.
Again, dumbing things down isn't the right answer. I didn't find the systems presented in NWoD 1.0 or 2.0 Werewolf particularly difficult to get through (unlike Mage -- holy fucking shit). I don't equate shitty execution and understanding with a shitty game.
- Totem spirit demands, loci maintenance, and gaining gifts from spirits has always been ignored and handwaved (95% of the time) so how central can they be?
Once more, I don't place a value on a part of the system based on others' incompetence or ignorance.
At the end of the day, the only werewolf sphere I've seen semi-competently run, was AQ's when Haunted Memories first started, and it almost killed him. I've never seen anyone since put in even half the effort to fully engage with and tackle the subject matter. There's clearly too much there for the average MUSHer to cope with or keep in their mind.
AQ was never good at delegating.
Frankly, I've found that Werewolf tends to attract a certain kind of player that lends to eschewing the complex in favor of the simple. That's fine, to a point. To me, as a GM, I would find it very frustrating if my pack of PCs ignored the demands of their other nature.
On a personal note, Changeling is a fairly complex game too. I play a Changeling on TR that leans more heavily on the human side for reasons that include her choice of Court (Winter) and low Wyrd score. Note, however, that I chose this path based on how RP shook out. I still would not advocate for removing all of the Hedgespinning and Token-Making mumbo-jumbo that I don't deal with regularly. And if I were staffing the sphere, I would make a concerted effort to please people by drafting and enforcing rules related thereto.
@surreality said in RL Anger:
I try to be a decent human being. I am incredibly snarky and have a grim as hell sense of humor, but I try to be a decent human being. I am not always successful, obviously, but I bother to make the attempt.
Your creative efforts are not shit.
We have disagreed on a lot of things, but I find it remarkable that anyone would classify what you have worked on -- what I have seen -- as bad.
That's unfathomable to me.
Take that for what you will. I have not seen your jewelry in a long time, but I doubt -- highly doubt -- that it qualifies as garbage.
I don't know what else to tell you. Inspiration is hard to find when it is stolen.
I like karaoke.
@Arkandel said in Brainstorming: Hybrid/Homebrew Werewolf Game:
What was the problem with it?
Everything.
@VulgarKitten said:
Population growth isn't a cure-all, but in the present economic situation it's likely to make the resolution of a range of problems much easier.
For Japan, maybe. For the United States, I doubt it. Last time I checked, the majority of theorists believe that there will be a huge economic problem in the near future as the baby-boomers become decrepit, productivity per capita drops, and we suffer another recession.
However, here's where I (and my research) differ from the converse school of thought: Kremer and other more recent theorists (Galor and Weil, Sorel) have stated and empirically confirmed that larger population is associated with higher population growth rates and faster technological development. Technological development, then, becomes a consequence of population growth, leads to an increase in labor productivity, per capita income and improvements in living conditions, and increased capitalism.
I can concede that larger populations will, by and large, have higher population growth rates and enjoy greater technological development, but I'm not willing to concede a reversal of causation, as suggested by your second comment.
Regarding Galor and Weil, this this paper by Lagerlof confirms my original criticism. In it, the author hypothesized:
"We also show that these cycles are not an artifact of the two-period life setting: allowing adults to live on after the second period of life with some probability does not make the oscillations go away. Rather, the cycles are driven by fertility being proportional to per capita income minus the parental subsistence requirement. When population is large, and per-capita incomes close to subsistence, fertility is therefore sensitive to changes in population levels."
This suggests that fertility -- or population growth -- is sensitive to the difference between per-capita income and subsistence income. Further, per-capital income flatten to subsistence as overall production reaches its demand-based limit. So, I'm not seeing population growth as a good thing at all, or that the relationships are more than observational.
That said, I don't intuitively see where population growth any causal connection to technological growth. My understanding is that technological growth is tied directly to investment into education and research. Larger populations tend to have the public income necessary to fund technological growth, but I don't think the population factor has a direct relation.
As for Japan, its country faces somewhat unique circumstances. It's difficult to suggest that any "traditional" or "general" fix would apply to it.
One, the one (action-y) thing she's supposed to be good at, well, she's actually just the same as everyone else (because everyone min-maxes). Two, the thing she's bad at, well, it makes her preeeetty bad and she's mostly always going to be that way. I think she can bump the skill once in a reasonable timeframe, but after that it will be (RL) years?
Most people on BSG:U should be good at what they do. Pilots are all going to be exceptional pilots; Marines are all going to be exceptional combatants. And the points allow you to do this, and this seems rather realistic to me.
Frankly, I like FS3. A lot. I think you need to funnel specialization the way @faraday has proposed, which is to limit the number of Attributes and Action Skills above "Good."
Edited to add: regarding Connor McDavid, amassing the most points does not make you the best player on a hockey team.
@VulgarKitten said:
At this point I've got enough on my plate with RL schoolwork to go pulling up more links for you.
Dear God, don't. Fishing for relevant economic papers is more fiendish than case precedents on the doctrine of exhaustion of administrative remedies. You've jogged my interest in economics again, for which I and my hardly-used graduate degree thank you.
@surreality said in Emotional separation from fictional content:
It's not actually that I don't think there should be any risks in MUing -- mostly because that's impossible, pie-in-the-sky idealism. The RL scenario you describe demonstrates why.
Just because a goal seems impossible doesn't mean we can't strive towards it.
I think that if there are reasonable, simple steps we can take to minimize the risks that exist, they are worth exploring.
Then do so. Justifying your reasons for doing so isn't necessary, nor is admonishing anyone for deciding not to do so. If there's one thing I've learned from the "more open" era of debating MUs on forums, it is that stating your intentions and following through is more productive than trying to coerce anyone else to agree with your rationale. I've wasted a pretty hour trying to explain why flat-gain XP and XP caps are beneficial, and others have run with those ideas years after.
Do your thing.
Some people learn. People like me merely confirm their suspicions.
@Arkandel said in Emotional separation from fictional content:
Staff... get distracted. They have a ton of shit to do, from +jobs to running plot. It's easy - it's been proven easy, historically - to overlook things happening right under their noses. That shapes the perception of their role over time, which combined with the fact certain vulnerable players don't want to bring attention to themselves by speaking out too aggressively (what if they are judged? or told they are the problem? both have happened, by the way) they let things slide.
I want to hook on this for just a second.
Don't mistake negligently overlooking an issue with deliberately avoiding it. As I said before, most of us plug in to have fun, not deal with problems between people. That requires a certain kind of psychotic asshole: one that likely practices the art of law and bullshittery in equal amounts.
Let's take the restaurant analogy back. You are the GM, maybe even the owner. The sous-chef is getting lippy with the head chef. Some of the tables haven't been waited on. And there's some guy wearing no pants jerking himself off while purring obscenely at a table of ladies. Which problem do you address first?
The same applies to games. If there is a player-player problem or player-staff problem, you should deal with that first. Especially if it comes down to this guy is making advances to me via page, please make him stop.
@jibberthehut said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
But if it doesn't belong to a resident or a visitor tag, why haven't they towed it, clearly then, it's not supposed to be there...
This, @Auspice. Get your property manager on the horn, and ask that it get towed away if it is on private property.
Yeah, and when you only roll once in a blue moon, the effects are amplified. Nobody playing tabletop bats an eye when their awesome archer misses a shot. It's expected. But do the same on a MU* and ZOMG it's the end of the world. I've often wondered if a radically different system would fit MU*s better - something like Amber's diceless system or a point-based system where you get to choose how to spend your luck or whatnot.
One of the things I learned from FS3 is that you can have a robust combat system with simplistic rolling. I'm on my fourth edition of my system, and I intend to pare down the system even more than what you've done, and I still think I can make it work.
@deadculture said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
My honest opinion on that is that if you work with a lot of standardized documents (and as a lawyer, you do), laser printers are not only more cost effective but have way less headache potential for you.
Laser.
Thankfully, the associate and partner that left in the past 7 months, and dropped all of their caseload on me, left their printers unguarded and their doors unbarred.
@Arkandel said in Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition Info:
They're trying to be respectful (which is why they didn't develop KotE in-house after all) which might mean many things. I wouldn't be shocked if the financial impact of doing so crossed their mind as well.
That KotE wasn't developed in-house meant little to me. The entire Year of the Lotus crap was ... well, crap. That it probably sank their operation doesn't make me sympathetic.
I'm not going to lie: when I started playing V:tM, I looked up a lot of what seemed to be White Wolf's inspiration. And, for me, that was the interesting part of it: discussing "Alamut" and its place in Christian mythology is an interesting exercise. But, here's the thing: I was uneducated about a topic, learned about it, and became educated (or at least conversant). That's part of the fun about gameplay, I guess. For me, at least.
So, we're going back to the Middle East, a place that was probably chosen less for its location as the oft-presumed "cradle of civilization" and more "because this is where we started" or "their governments are less likely to be offended by some game company making up shit about their past culture." That makes sense to me.
But, as you point out: it's lazy. Which is what makes it, for me, uninteresting and boring.
And to suggest that White Wolf has tried to be respectful is almost laughable after the shit-show that was the Year of the Lotus. Or the Nunnehi. Or the Tzimisce. But I give it a pass because it's a game.
I have always believed, and will argue to the death, that Romeo and Juliet was Shakespeare's greatest comedy.
@Seraphim73 said in FS3:
I think that thousands of rolls happen faster than you might think in FS3 2nd Edition. Uh... yeah... so here's where I remind everyone that I'm a massive system nerd. I've probably got about 5,000 individual FS3 rolls under my belt over the last five years. Considering that in FS3 2nd Edition each attack in +combat actually causes 2-7 rolls (attack, defense, hit location, armor penetration, armor reduction, lethality, KO--way more if you're firing burst, autofire, or using an explosive weapon), and I've run a lot of +combats for fun, for testing, and for scenes... I wouldn't be surprised at all if I've seen the results of more than 5,000 rolls in FS3 (that's only 1000ish attacks).
Jesus.
And here I am thinking: "Man, I like FS3, and I'm going to use it as inspiration to simplify my own system!"
I still like it. But what I'm working on is simpler still, and I'm happy for that.
As for WoD, the rolls to take fucking forever because of the discussion on what to roll:
And that's one side of it.
So, I like FS3's code which handles all of that, and tells you: BITCH PLZ THIS BE WUT YOU GET SHADDAP.
Listening to anyone tell me about how social health care systems don't work.
Listening to anyone tell me about how Canadian is a communist country.
Listening to anyone tell me about how the economy is working.
Listening to anyone, really.
Heh, that actually happens a lot and makes me wonder sometimes if I'm being overly pedantic about it or if the BG skill levels are either wickedly unclear or out of whack. I think it's probably one of the things I've written most on apps: "Sooooo you've got Math at Expertise. Did you really mean to be a PhD? If so fine but... I'm guessing not."
Look, I just thought it would be cute to have my scout get lost in examining water patterns while out on a recon mission.
@auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:
I have a brand new car! I don't want to deal with that shit.
You should've splurged for the cow catcher option.
So where's the disconnect? Is it documentation? Expectation? I'm just being too nitpicky?
Player understanding. Now that I know, I know.
Don't fret about it. I just found it funny.