@thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:
Who do you think? She can afford a corset-style leather jacket.
From what I know of both of you, I'm fairly certain I wouldn't break a sweat repelling you.
That and, y'know, I'm a bad-ass Internet bitch.
And I carry.
Personally, I would be perfectly happy without a grid. 99% of the scenes on BSGU involve people using meetme/temprooms as it is. But my experience is the same as what other folks have said on the thread: the lack of a grid is a turn-off to some (many?)
See, my experience on BSG:U is different. Aside from the combat scenes, which took place elsewhere, most of my RP happens on the ship. I like the idea of being openly accessible, and it's proven to be ICly inconvenient at times. But that's the beauty of it, I guess.
@fatefan said in How low can "low stakes" be and still be compelling for RP?:
However, if the game's focus is on peasant farmers, then it becomes very much a matter of (potentially) high drama.
This is what I like about Fifth Kingdom. Sure, there are Lords and Ladies, but you can also play common folk. There are battles to be won, faeries to interact with, and beasts to slay. All this is far more compelling than oh my, monsieur count, yes, i would love attend the spring ball on your arm.
But if you like that, I'm pretty sure you could have that RP too on Fifth Kingdom. Mostly, I just see a lot of action, challenges, and sleeping around liberally because my PC is like that when he's drinking, which is all the time.
@jaded said in General Video Game Thread:
I expect TLoU 2 will be as emotional as the first game was. And it was one of only two games ever that made me feel like my heart was ripped out of my chest.
The first 15 minutes the game made the first 5 minutes of Up look like sunshine and rainbows.
@faraday said in AresMUSH Updates:
(Unless you want fully-automated combat, in which case you are.)
I want a lot of things, but this is the non-pareil that I'm trying to snag.
I think a big difference is that where Catholics tend to spend a lot of time focusing on matters of conscience, with the need for regular confession, strains of guilt, and a fearful respect for a God who don't suffer no bullshit when he knows what was in your heart at the time, other strains of Christianity have bypassed that into the theory that sudden "re-baptisms" suddenly wash the slate clean, and that you can flaunt your "blessings" as victories and signs of God's approval.
I think the difference between evangelical Christians and other Christian faiths is that the others have a deeper history to contemplate from. For example, what history does Joel Osteen's mega-church have? What's the 700 Club have behind Pat Robertson?
I grew up with a healthy skepticism of religion, thanks to Lisa Simpson. But I also grew up with a healthy individual of faith: my father. He always went to church, and still does go every day. Still married to my mother. This is despite the fact that, as far as I know, he has always been gay.
Faith is a funny thing.
With Pope Francis, I feel as if the Catholic Church is turning a corner and coming back in line with the core of Jesus' teachings: be good to others; love your neighbors; turn the other cheek; sit with sinners; be charitable to the less fortunate. Maybe his continued influence will cause some of the barriers to break further, but we'll see.
@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:
B-but my character would never fall for that! She's above the bullshit, just like me!
You could provide a reward to characters that use social combat, only to have the targets refuse to comply based on agency. If in nWoD 2E, give them a Beat.
You could provide a reward to characters who give in without a roll, or where they knowingly accept a negative consequence as a result of going along with the desired result. Give them a Beat.
Cap the beats, and people will still play the social combat game.
Lots of ways to make it work for as many people as possible.
Goddamned Scorchers.
HZD: The Frozen Wilds remains fun as shit.
But fuck you, Scorchers.
@ixokai said in Is there a basics of CG out there somewhere?:
I think the order you do things doesn't really matter, because IMHO chargen is mandatory and until its active a game shouldn't be open to players. Hand-statting sucks-- it requires the users to literally know everything possible and requires them to do no errors and staff to catch the inevitable errors and not make mistakes when setting up the stats. I hate hand statting.
Players like to have control over setting their stats.
What many players may not remember is that there were once games where there was no chargen. What you did was apply for a character, which meant sending @mail to staff about what stats you wanted. Staff would then review the application, and stat the PC for you.
Back in the day, I hand-statted everyone as a staffer. I knew the commands; I knew if the points worked; and it allowed me to interact with the player prior to having them on the game. It was not a bad thing; it was a good thing. It required me to spend more time on the game than I may have wanted, and where there was a dozen apps in one day some people would have to wait longer -- sort of.
Frankly, if staff had to hand-stat everyone, we'd probably avoid a lot of problems, and the frustration of players not knowing how to use the CGen commands. And because most games require a review process anyhow, I don't think it would slow things down substantially.
@ShelBeast said in Eliminating social stats:
Am I the only person who sees that declaring an FTB (not just talking about the seduction angle, but literally using FTB for damn near any "undesirable" social influence) as still having agency?
It's not really the same thing, or supposed to be. FTB is used when you accept the consequences, but don't want to play through them. Seizing agency to deny the result of a roll in order to preserve your vision of your PC is another thing altogether.
Let's get real, people. This happens to literally every single one of us. Every. Single. One. And most people, it happens to on some small scale nearly every day. We are always being talked into things we don't initially want.
That's fine. I think that most players (that are here) don't care much if someone intimidates their PC into submission or uses persuasion to con their PC into paying money for something the PC doesn't really want or need. The issue being addressed is situations where the PC is being forced into a path of RP that the player is uncomfortable with, be it adultery or rape or something even more unsavory. These incidences are rare, but when you have the unspoken rule of "play the game or you're a bad person," some players may take advantage of that mentality to coerce other players into playing situations that they don't want to, and that may force those others off the game.
Inserting "agency," or the fallback that you will always retain a measure of control over your character's actions, is intended to be a way to check that ability. This, like all things, can also be abused. So, you can put in incentives or systems that encourage people not to exert "agency" all the time, and accept some unpleasant consequences, in order to balance out the entire "consent" feel.
At the end of the day, it's just a way to strike a balance between folks that want a safe place to play in, and folks that prefer a realistic simulation.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice is 25% on Steam right now.
This is the game you need.
@HelloProject said in UX: It's time for The Talk:
All of these things are a part of UX. UX means user experience.
I hope you understand the irony here.
You have the luxury and privilege of having a diverse set of experiences, I think. And that's fine. I do not, and I know where I have spent most of my years. The implicit onus on WoD games has less to do with the code and more to do with the storyline you play in. I would wager that many games don't really give a crap what equipment you have; as long as the participants in a scene don't care, no one cares -- and it's not a problem. This is different on a MUD, where, in my experience, if you don't got it, you don't got it.
For you, this is frustrating. I get that. For me, it isn't. And while there could be code improvements, when it comes to CoD games I'm far more interested in seeing whether it will try to create a political or economy system that would eventually create its own RP. Because I've seen it happen before, and I know it's possible.
Show "them" we can do better? What's the point? This isn't a competition. And I'm not one to condescend as to the choices of a particular community. I may think that people who play superhero games are masturbatory wanks, but that doesn't mean I think that WoD gamers are any better or worse.
What I've learned in a short few weeks is that there's a whole world of experience and gamers I've never played with, and I like them, and I'd rather adapt to their expectations than have them try to meet mine. And I think if more people embraced that attitude, we'd have fewer incidences of OOC drama.
@dontpanda said in RL Anger:
@Jaded I'm not in the legal system, but I'd like to think whoever is deciding that case (judge, jury, wise old owl, whoever) not only throws it out but adds a few thousand dollars of "wasting the court's time" money.
On this note, look up Ohio Revised Code s. 2323.51.
@Taika said in Making Territory Relevent:
So what makes territory valuable, and what balances it?
What makes territory valuable is what resources may be drawn from it. To balance this, make more valuable territories more difficult to maintain over time.
@thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:
But whatever we think, that we had different experiences and still enjoyed the game means it deserves some kind of Most Amazing RPG To Date award.
That award clearly goes to The Last of Us. Still.
The Witcher 3 is awesome, but I think I enjoyed Horizon Zero Dawn more.
Still, bewbs.
@HelloProject said in UX: It's time for The Talk:
As far as I can tell, I've only been addressing coders, so what is the problem?
You don't see it? Okay.
You're not an experienced coder. I don't think you ought to lecture coders on their practices, as if they had not thought of it already. Because you're not an experienced coder.
Don't piss off the coders.
Instead, focus on what you can fix. Like policies, communication, grid design, administrative systems, wiki entries, etc.
Or, just design your own codebase and fix this whole barrier of entry thing through your own efforts.
I can watch Babylon5 reruns AND Flyers hockey, thank you.
I don't think the Flyers play hockey as much as they skate around aimlessly in the hopes that the puck will slide into their opponents' net.
Yes. I went there.
I just bought FF VI on sale for my iPad. And I'm getting FFT: TWotL for it too. Hurray!
