Posts made by Ganymede

@bored said in Do we need staff?:

I honestly don't follow your argument. You say WoD = toxic players, but then point out WoD games that are exceptions. So it's the specific game, not the genre/system, right?

I don't recall ever saying that World of Darkness games are exceptions to any rule. What I said was that World of Darkness games attract a certain variety of players. That does not mean that other games do not do the same; my comment is specifically-related to a particular genre of games, and that genre is generally known by the system employed. There are a variety of games within that particular genre/system.

I am arguing neither that "few quality staff" > "lots of bad staff" nor that World of Darkness games require more staff per capita than other games. What I am positing is that having a Hammer around helps to keep away the certain players I've described which generally make everyone's life on the game miserable in myriad ways, and that, in my experience, games with no such staff member soon get crushed by these players.

I don't agree that World of Darkness games actually require more staff per capita, although this ends up being the case. As many can attest to, this occurs because of the certain variety of players I described. The general flexibility of the system, which is a boon to storytellers and players alike, can get gamed hard by people who want to twist it to their advantage, and this is a problem inherent in the system itself. In my opinion, this is a sad mockery.

@taika said in Do we need staff?:

Except I know for a fact Rex/Ashur/Sovereign was on Eldritch playing as a demon.

I don't mean to belittle those who have been victimized by him, but unless someone makes him staff he hasn't caused an entire game to fall. Obvious cat is obvious.

There are others out there -- no, not Spider -- who fall into the category I have in mind.

It's nice to know that, around here, we can all agree that unnecessary kitty suffering is a cause we can all get behind.

@bored said in Do we need staff?:

Without it, you get raped by otter furries. And I don't want to get raped by otter furries.

You know why you're bored? The absence of otter furry rape, I reckon.

When I played on Eldritch, you know who were conspicuously absent from the game? The handful of foul, power-gaming, goal-oriented, fun-sucking, must-be-dominating players. I'm guessing it is because the game was set up in such a fashion that you really couldn't do any of that.

I also didn't notice the same thing on Fallen World because, I suppose, I either didn't see much behind the curtain or that staff team, again, kept a tight ship.

People can say, "but, Gany, those places petered out within 24 months." This is true. And maybe we can hypothesize the absence of shitheads makes a game boring to play on. Maybe that says a little bit about what World of Darkness gamers are like.

But, like you, I don't buy it at all.

I buy into what Thenomain is saying, for the most part, but not entirely. I am of the opinion that every game needs not a PHB but a Hammer: the person that will come down and without hesitation intervene when a player comes off the rails. Too often, there's no such staff member; everyone believes that if we all just play nice, everyone will play nice.

That's bullshit.

Otherwise, yeah, you need the right staff. That's hard to find. I know who I trust out there to run these sorts of games, though, so --

@wretched

Fuck.

I'd like to get the place started, really, but I --

-- fuck.

@zombiegenesis

No problem.

I'm just interested and excited in people playing in a place that Frontline put into a false light.

Really, it's not all gunshots and dope around here, srs.

@zombiegenesis said in Potential Buffy Game:

The good news is the code work on the mux itself is done. I just need to build the grid and get the wiki up and running for the most part and we'll be good to go. I'm hoping (fingers crossed) to open a week or so before Halloween.

The offer to work on the Grid and other locations to assist remains open.

@rizbunz

I missed this back when, perhaps, but what system are you using?

@lithium

What the hell is this TTG thing?

@bored said in Do we need staff?:

WoD is kind of the perfect storm of being shitty for this, though. It's high conflict but generally can't be automated because it's a fundamentally exception-based rules system with tons of separate moving parts. It risks a lot of thematic drift because while it has source material, the abundance of crazy power shit perfectly well lets someone play out their RapeOtter fantasies as if it was FurryMUCK.

As I've pointed out before, and as RDC has done, that doesn't mean a World of Darkness game cannot run just fine without a massive staff population.

The great thing about World of Darkness games is that they are based on books. The great thing about those books is that they are pretty easy to get through (with some exceptions, like Mage). And the system, for the most part, is easy to figure out: (1) gather dice; (2) roll dice; and (3) see what happens.

The big problem is the player base the games attract, and how the handful of foul, power-gaming, goal-oriented, fun-sucking, must-be-dominating players really take the piss out of the fun that others have.

@thenomain said in Poll: Fantasy Earth 2.0:

A lot of people prefer Modern over Noir for their D&D Earth. I'll be honest, I'm rather surprised; are people Noir'd out?

I think that modern is a setting that's easier to grasp than noir.

@arkandel said in Do we need staff?:

How was @mietze's concern about thematic cohesion addressed by those games?

It was addressed by players, mostly. When you have a group of players who understand the game's theme and setting well, they will generally steer the game towards what staff want to see.

I can honestly say that theme-drift wasn't much of a problem on BSG:U or Fifth Kingdom. That doesn't mean there weren't scenes of silliness, though. On BSG:U, Auspice and I had our PCs RP through a session of Lasers and Feelings. On Fifth Kingdom, there was a memorable scene where my very masculine PC had to wrestle a pig down, but ended up getting gored in the testicles.

I would wager that BSG:U's theme was so tight that Faraday could open it back up again tomorrow, and we could probably get the old band back together to go and fight some Cylons. She could step back, and whoever had the time to run a fight scene could, really. Part of the beauty of her code is that you really don't need staff for anything, and yet you can easily punch through a massive war scene -- 20+ actors -- in a couple of hours.

So, do you need staff? Yes. Do you need a huge staff? No. What's the difference? Automation, good coding, and a tight, easily-understood theme.

@arkandel said in Do we need staff?:

For the sake of this thread let's give up on trying to define what a "MUD" or a "MUSH" or whatever is and drill down to the essential question; can a roleplaying game be designed with little or even no staff necessary to run it?

Yes. BSG: Unification is a good example of this. Faraday ran the game herself, pretty much. Players ran a lot of the little military missions; all Faraday had to do (other than what she did do, which was above and beyond) was to simply tell the player base where they were and what sort of missions would be appropriate.

I loved Fifth Kingdom. There was little need for staff interference or intervention, but the plots that were run were enjoyable. Even when the plots petered out, many of us still came on to have good fun with one another. The tools were all there; we were only limited by our desires.

Ugly Delicious is a food show you don't want to miss. Rotten too. All on Netflix.

I like Cooked, but it's a bit preachy and slow for me.

@testament said in Random links:

For you grammar Nazis in the house, you and Mike Pompeo have something in common.

I can assure you that I have nothing in common with Mike Pompeo.

For one thing, I don't ignore major oversights in my work, like domestic terrorists.

@thenomain

I can play Final Fantasy VI on my iPhone. That's why I like it.

Plus, and I suppose this is a spoiler, but you fucking lose.

Fucking. Lose.

Like, you don't win. You only get revenge.

Also, stay on the floating continent as long as possible. You'll thank me later.

@thenomain

The Final Fantasy VI port is much better.

@auspice said in Um...What?:

Isn't he in Ohio?
I hear they're about twenty years behind everyone else and Sneaker collecting did begin to rise in the mid-80s...

In Ohio, you can not win a game and be thought to have saved a season.

I'm in.

@coin said in Good TV:

Honestly, the LotR one is one of the ones I just sort of went "meh" at. I am less interested in it than I am in some of the stuff I don't even know the source material for.

Just as a reminder, Netflix is still developing The Witcher.