Posts made by Ganymede

@rdc said in Requiem 2e Bloodlines:

I'm super into custom local flavor. That said, unfortunately, most of the local stuff I wrote for NOLA 1 didn't get read by...basically anyone. We had precisely one person not on staff significantly interact with one Mystery Cult, and that was about it. Benefit vs. cost doesn't seem to work out when you try to alter what people expect too radically.

To be honest, when I was playing on NOLA I felt as if staff wasn't running anything. It felt very DIY -- which is fine -- but that turned me away from things like Mystery Cults.

Here's a link to an alternate form of The Descent's bloodlines:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1x1SJk_MEsd3bWtplsMla6w3UPNVJUnxeWzsc2G8R2Xc/edit

@tragedyjones, I re-wrote the Icarians into crazy crusaders. I like them better than the Sons of Cade, but I'm partial to my shit, for reasons.

@tragedyjones said in Requiem 2e Bloodlines:

Which 3 would you recommend, and why?

It depends on the game's theme and setting, as I said.

Since the game is in NOLA, Les Gens Libres and the Apollonaire should be considered. The Rotgrafen might be added too, as sea pirates play heavily into New Orleans' backstory. As NOLA is also a ghostly place, I suggested to RDC using the Sta-Au and Dragolescu from The Descent, which were heavily-tied to ghosts.

Just some thoughts.

@skew said in Requiem 2e Bloodlines:

I'll msg you a link. @Ganymede and I did a lot of these for a different game. I don't know if G has worked on more since then, but I can send the ones I have.

I did the ones for The Descent, I did a bunch for the Dark Ages game I was working on, and I have a handful more from here and there. I'll send over whatever's appropriate for the theme and setting, although I generally recommend 3 for each Clan, and no more than that.

@kanye-qwest said in How to: make your poses less repetitive:

do you actually type the word "Break" in your poses to indicate a pause? Personally, I think it's TOO much of a pause. In the example it definitely took me out of the flow of what was being said. Beat works, break doesn't. For me, at least!

Yes, I do.

As you point out, there is a difference between a beat and a break. A beat is a short pause; a break is much longer one. It is a rare thing to use because simply writing 'break' indicates no movement or action other than the break itself. Still, a break ought not last longer than two seconds.

And, yes, the intent is to interrupt the flow of conversation.

As I said elsewhere, I also have plenty that I've written up. And, again, make sure your chosen bloodlines are tied to the theme and setting.

@a-meowley said in Miami, Blood in the Water:

This is very good news. From what I remember the GC at Fate's Harvest is a breeze to use, and had good documentation throughout. FH's automated XP spending system is great. Also their +sheet colour coding and formatting/wrapping is great. And +ref, and +hedgefruit, and +repose, and +posebreak, and +poseorder, those are great too.

Fate's Harvest, generally, is one of the best-coded places I've ever been at. It practically reduces all of the thought-work and referencing of World of Darkness games into its code-base. For example, Annapurna has pain-stakingly imputed every single available contract into her +reference base, so that you can figure out your roll, catch, cost, and effect without needing to click open a .PDF.

@rdc

I have a large number of Bloodlines already written up, that you are welcome to use.

A thought, though: make sure your lines are tied to your theme and setting. They feel more useful and important that way. Finding a Banda Cantu or Rakshasa in New Orleans may be a little odd.

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

I'm generally not a fan of epithets in most situation, and this is a good article about good uses and bad uses that I generally agree with. In RP I tend to often find they muddle scenes unless you're literally in a 1:1 because it's really easy to lose who's talking. (Unless you're in a 1:1 or it's literally a situation or a game style where your PC's identity is obscured or whatever, your name should ALWAYS be in your pose.)

As an alternate opinion, I've found that mixing up capitalized descriptors and nicknames helps spice things up. For example:

Wes looks at Cumani with a cackle, eyes alight with mischief. "Is that so?" He looks to his left, and then to his right. "Why, how could that be? For it seems to be, as you well know, that but for what words come out of my mouth, whoever else could I be?" As if that meant everything -- his final answer -- Wes winks.

That could be re-written as:

Wes looks at Cumani with a cackle, eyes alight with mischief. "Is that so?" The Hierophant looks to his left, and then to his right. "Why, how could that be? For it seems to be, as you well know, that but for what words come out of my mouth, whoever else could I be?" As if that meant everything -- the Seven of Words' final answer -- the Acolyte of Madness winks.

Mind, Wes had, like, eleventy billion nicknames for himself, but I think the second example, even in a crowd, reads a lot better than the first.

It helps if your character has other attributes or nicknames to differentiate him or her from everyone else. Clarice, for instance, is the Murder Mouse, the Winter Soldier, the Icy Waitress, and so on. Erin was the Aquarian, the Scientist, and the Trash Panda.

@tyche said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:

Mind you, I haven't actually played it. But it reads well.

In my opinion, GURPS Vampire is absolutely horrible to play on table-top or in a MUSH environment.

That said, we were talking about whether Vampire could be adapted into a FS3 game, and I decided that I need to listen to Faraday more.

@tyche said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:

If you look at GURPS: Vampyre, a beginning vampire gets 200-300 points to build, while modern mortals would be built using 100-150 points.

That presents the immortals with the overall advantage, but not specific advantage. I think Faraday's point, which is well-taken, is that the specific advantage isn't a substantial advantage.

@faraday said in MU* Server Technology/Features. What do you WANT, what do you SEE?:

Chat client RP has been around almost as long as MUSHes have. Once upon a time it was AOL chatrooms, later IRC, now Discord. For simple, freeform RP it's hard to beat "create an account on Discord and go!" - both in terms of game setup and game playing. MUSHes are way more involved. The learning curve is steeper, the culture is in many ways off-putting, and setting up a game is prohibitively difficult.

Have you tried Role? It's an app.

I looked at it, and I don't know how to feel about it.

@sonder said in Miami, Blood in the Water:

I really struggled with the idea of saying anything but we’re a community and if I’m wrong about what happened, I’ll apologize but I feel like this sort of stuff maybe needs to be said.

It does. It really does need to be said.

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

I like to ape styles, when I notice patterns, and then try to apply each style to a character.

I do the same, generally, but tailor my style to the player.

SunnyJ poses differently than Auspice, who poses differently than Arkandel, etc. Molding my writing to theirs a little helps with the overall scene's flow. My "chosen" style right now is mostly, and perhaps unfortunately, because I am trying to practice my writing craft.

That said, y'all don't really want me to RP as I write.

"After reading your letter, it is my understanding that your clients have no interest in taking appropriate and reasonable steps towards trying to bring this case to a speedy resolution. My impression is that they would rather remained mired in discovery by making demands which are neither reasonable nor practical. If you wish to bring this matter to the Court’s attention, bear in mind that we will bring up your clients’ discovery deficiencies at that time, so that the Court can see and judge their lack of comity."

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

I've made an effort since then to change up how I write things, I don't exactly want to keep writing like a 15 year old. My question today is, how do you folks keep your writing fresh/dynamic/evolving? Any resources that you like to check out or just a conscious effort to switch up stuff?

It has to be a conscious effort.

When I came back to the hobby a few years ago, I started to interject acting directions into my poses. For example:

Ripley stares at Claudio. "That's nice. I can see where you would assume that; however, that's not the case, and that was never the case." She looks away. "And I'm sorry that you thought that, but that does not change how I feel or what I want."

That became something like:

Ripley looks to Claudio. "That's nice." Beat. "I can see where you would assume that." Another beat. "However, that's not the case, and that was never the case." She turns from him; looks away. "And I'm sorry that you thought that." Break. "But that does not change how I feel or what I want."

Now, my pose might look something like this:

There's an awkward silence before Ripley finally looks at Claudio

"That's nice." Beat. "I can see where you would assume that." Another beat, as if to signal a change in mood. "However, that's not the case, and that was never the case." There's a note of finality in the end.

She looks away then.

"And I'm sorry that you thought that." Break. "But that does not change how I feel or what I want."

And then Ripley says no more.

I'm not sure how I feel about my newer style, but it has challenged me to write that way. Normally, I write like I'm trying to punch a hole in your eyes with words.

@faraday said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:

Expert human (11) beats Expert human (11) -- 4 out of 10 times.
Expert vampire (15) beats Expert human (11) -- 6 out of 10 times.

Shouldn't two humans of equal skill prevail against each other 5 out of 10 times?

If you think a 20% boost is an appropriate model for a vampire with an expert Presence or Dominate - hey, go for it. But that doesn't really sound like what @Ganymede wanted when she said "bend the odds in favor of a vampire expert against a mortal expert substantially."

You're right, it's not, but the mathematics are the mathematics and numbers don't lie. It just means I need to sit down and think a little more.

That Space Opera game, though, sounds squishy-funner.

@bear_necessities said in Calaveras: Adult Fiction Drama MU:

As far as the fluff v. substance thing, I think that the players can fix that without issue.

For me, the line between fluff and substance is exceedingly thin.

But, then again, I do love me some Teen Titans Go.

@faraday said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:

It is scaled for mortal conflict, and once you go beyond the "best of human ability" level, the dice just get silly and your rating 20 vampire is really not much better than your rating 13 vampire.

I know. But, as you've told me before, you're working on a basic package, and a skilled coder can adjust it as needed. I'm counting on the latter to assist.

For example, if you limited the available ratings on Action Skills and Attributes to 5, the maximum human ability for, let's say, Melee would be 10. If your Vampire had Potence 5 (with Potence being coded in as another Action Skill), the combat engine could be adjusted so that it adds a PC's Potence rating to Melee attacks, and, in turn, bend the odds in favor of a vampire expert against a mortal expert substantially. Celerity could be added to opposing defense rolls to make vampires harder to hit than mortals. And Fortitude could be added to armor to make vampires tougher to kill.

It's just a thought for the moment. I had more thoughts on a game like Final Fantasy adapted to FS3, which may be more interesting and productive. I've a jumble of notes at home.

Plus it has zero concept of "powers" built in. Even if you went to the considerable trouble to add that, using powers to augment abilities (as many WoD powers work) again runs into the same dice issue as the 20/13 example. So I really just don't think the math works.

@surreality said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:

People have to acquire books and learn a truly staggering number of nebulously worded mechanics that can be interpreted by reasonable people in a variety of ways and house-rule the hell out of a great many things to clarify, let alone adapt.

See, what I meant was that the adaptation would substantially narrow the scope of what each power could or would do. Specifically, I was thinking that Vampire could be adapted to FS3's mechanics with a lot of tinkering.

Why the hell would I want to do that, right?

Because the World of Darkness is an interesting concept and setting. The Vampire world presented in Old World of Darkness has all sorts of lovely permutations in it.

Sure, there will be purists who will scoff at how limiting that might be. And there will be people griping about how all of the intricacies and nuances of powers like Dominate and Presence may be reduced to mere bonuses to actions. I get that; I do.

But these are pretend-fun-time games. That's the strength of MUSHing, and what separates it from MMORPGs and MUDs. We have to presume that players are going to be interested in playing make-believe. And, if that's the case, all that you really have to do is describe what a certain level in Dominate or Presence can allow a character to do and create a mechanical roll for it. Faraday's code does the second part very well, so all that matters is how well one does the first part.

@surreality said in What RPG SYSTEM do you want to play on a Mu*?:

The answer you probably know I'm going to give you, Theno: one designed explicitly for MU and not tabletop.

Honestly, the dream has been to code in a hack for World of Darkness' lines. And, honestly, FS3 is what I've been eye-balling.