Posts made by Ganymede

@arkandel said in Earning stuff:

There's are some IC candidates for the position, none of them a clear forerunner but there's interest in the vacancy. Then a new person, OOC friend of the Captain's and known by staff creates a new character and voila, that PC is handed the keys to the Captaincy.

Poe was really angry when Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo took over the Resistance. Sure, she was a friend of Leia's and had some success in the field, but she didn't earn the command of the Raddus. But that tension is an important part of The Last Jedi, and plays itself out well.

Staff should always give the keys to someone they trust. This is much, much more important than someone earning the keys. In a military game, it should surprise no one that someone comes in to take command of a unit that was not part of that unit to begin with. But if the new PC is a trusted someone, then staff really needs to trust them to step into a game and take over where resistance is to be expected.

I'm over the idea of "earning" something IC, and everyone else ought to be as well. Play the damn game.

@magee101 said in San Francisco: Paris of the West:

There must be some sort of tweak or new system that is added in VtR? I personally avoid VtR bc I dont like politic play so I am on board with you in hoping VtR political systems dont spread to the whole game.

Exactly this.

The Danse Macabre provided a social combat system for vampires. It was implied that only vampires should use it because vampires are inherently social creatures, and often resolve their differences through social means. It was meant, I believe, to give oomph to some of the social and mental disciplines, to dull the primacy of physical disciplines.

I don't really think it's appropriate for any other system. At all.

@aria

@toreadorfool said in San Francisco: Paris of the West:

Staff were talking earlier about Social Combat being in effect, and that they are working to have it include more then just Vamp, iirc. NOT certain on this, though!

God, I hope not.

@bobgoblin

I would argue that Bosh's WS was substantially inflated due to the fact that the Raptors, at the time, weren't a very good time without him. Ray Allen has always been a clutch player, but at 37 he wasn't getting a lot of bites in free agency for his WS.

I ain't got no response to the Love trade, but it's possible that Minnesota really wanted a ham sandwich (Anthony Bennett). Or a salary dump ($6.5M, if I recall). Wiggins was rookie of the year for 2014-2015, and has scored 15+ PPG in his career.

I concur with Arkandel: the Cavs roster is overpaid. Very overpaid. Neither Smith nor Thompson deserve the coin they got, period.

@bad-at-lurking said in Gamifying Plots:

I'd love to have that kind of time, but MUing is not a job and I'm fairly sure that if I stopped feeding him, my dog would eventually eat me.

Dogs are more loyal than that. Cats are not.

Anyhow, when I said "staff," I meant "everyone on staff." Frankly, doing 10 scenes per month isn't a bad goal at all.

To hook on what someone said about incentivizing the behavior you want to see, and presuming your game allows minor PRPs, here's a suggested system that may get some traction:

Offer 1 XP/week as a flat-rate gain to all PCs. Tally every plot run, for which a log is submitted. For every 10 logs submitted, increase the flat-rate gain by 1 XP. While the system creates a free-loader problem, it incentivizes people to get others onto the game and engaged in PRPs, no matter how small or insignificant.

@livia said in Helpful Spellcasting Flowchart:

Man I was trying to teach Jyhad to a magic player just recently and just going through all the different card types made them give up

Right? And that's just the powers. That's not going through the myriad of strategies you can employ. Ventrue stealth-bleeding. Tremere combat-decking. Assamite thaumaturgy-tossing. And so on.

Yes, I am and was that Jyhad/V:TES nerd that made cards for her MUSH alts, shut up.

@cobaltasaurus said in Helpful Spellcasting Flowchart:

See, I see it and find it visually distracting and would rather just double check myself with the various tables in the book.

I feel the same. To re-word what I said above, the flowchart might be useful if you are familiar with the system and can use it as a reference, but to a newbie it may be mind-bogglingly and unnecessarily complex.

@admiral said in The Basketball Thread:

except for all the guys who took paycuts for the title run to play on the Cavs, just like they did with the Heat. Every ring on Lebron's fingers came from superstars taking paycuts to stack teams.

And who were they, aside from Wade on the Heat?

@jennkryst said in nWorld of Darkness 1E v 2E:

Not... really. The diminishing returns makes it more sensible to begin as a specialist who then branches out and becomes well-rounded.

The law of diminishing returns posits that as total investment increases, the total return on investment as a proportion of the total investment (the average product or return) decreases. In other words, as you try to produce more, you have to spend constantly-increasing amounts of resources to get there.

As this applies to 1E's XP progression, it means that it costs more and more XP to get just one dot as a person gains more expertise.

While this makes it more sensible to begin as a specialist, it still means, as I said, that you become more well-rounded as you spend XP. Hence, "make a well-founded PC".

@d-bone said in nWorld of Darkness 1E v 2E:

11/7/5, 5/4/3. Try and match your dots to your abilities and concept as best as you can. The games are similar in that way, and those tilts and conditions are the effect of powers that often times are specified within the power/merit itself. (Fighting styles giving -1 to dex instead of a leg wrack tilt for example.) It creates a shared language of easily referable status effects.

As Magee101 previously pointed out, this is very similar to oWoD, and is also very similar to other systems, like L5R or the Silhouette System.

And becuase of this, this incredible similarity, there is no logical reason why 1e has to maintain a multiplicative xp system.

XP is presumably gained linearly per game session. Exponential costs follow the law of diminished returns. 1E makes it sensible to make a well-rounded PC over a specialist, whereas 2E does not favor either approach.

Either way, I'm not terribly interested in a debate? Because I think it's a matter of preference in the end. You don't like what I have to say, and I'm not here to convince you to change your mind or think differently; that's up to you.

@bobgoblin said in The Basketball Thread:

Also, can the statements of the Cav's being 'trash' stop? If they are trash, then why do their players combined have the highest salary in the league? If those players are really that bad, then the GM needs to be fired immediately and sent to a Gulag in Serbia.

The Cavs' lineup beyond LeBron isn't bad, but it's not great. And, yes, their GM blows hard, actually, and should be sent to a gulag.

@magee101 said in Helpful Spellcasting Flowchart:

MtG is far from the most complex tcg to exist. [L5R] but I agree!

Pff. You think L5R is complex? Try V:TES. That shit was super complex out of the box, when it was Jyhad.

@d-bone

I'm hardly concerned with what you think about my beliefs or opinions, but your thoughts and statements reinforce them.

As you said, the way you build sheets in 1E and 2E are vastly different. The way you build your PC through XP is necessarily different because of the removal of exponential XP costs. You have Conditions too, which help you get additional XP. But there's more than that.

Conditions don't exist in 1E, and are extremely important for Vampire (if you play it). Vampire 1E and Vampire 2E play completely differently because of the way Disciplines work, and other matters. Werewolf 1E and 2E are almost completely alien. And in 2E, you have systems that don't exist in 1E, and these systems -- the Doors system, the Clues system, the Chase mechanics -- are well thought-out, interesting, and built into the Merits system.

Regardless, we're talking about opinions. I would agree that putting a PC together is similar between the two systems, but the considerations are far greater in 2E and that's what makes it a different game.

It doesn't matter to me. To me, they are two separate games, like nWoD v. oWoD.

I prefer 2E vastly, but comparing things is folly and pointless.

@bobgoblin said in The Basketball Thread:

Since they paid for their championship last year? No.

They had to brutalize their way through the Cavaliers to do it, and the Rockets are exposing their liabilities.

Frankly, LeBron looks like a man on a mission. Good luck stopping him this year. He looks pissed off every damn game.

@magee101

This flowchart and Mage's magick system are substantially less complicated than the strategies to victory in Magic: The Gathering.

Frankly, while I appreciate the complexity of the system, I think that folks who find it so very complicated are the ones trying to optimize their PCs. This is a noble pursuit, but not for me.

I don't play high Gnosis PCs for a reason. I don't care to debate the complexities of the magick system. I know how what I do works, and that's enough for me.

@warma-sheen said in The Basketball Thread:

Yeah, them stars have trouble being consistent in the top game. But they can win their conferences consistently with just about anyone on their team. I don't like it, but they've earned the respect. From me anyway.

I don't want this to become the Football Thread, but I team of deaf chimps could win the AFC East in the absence of the Patriots.

@bobgoblin said in The Basketball Thread:

I think also this is where the league is falling into trouble. Too many of the teams are built through free agency 'super teams' doing low bidding (or going so far over the salary cap that it's ridiculous). I historically hate Boston, but what excited me about them was that they've been built through trades and draft. That's building, not just taking massive pay cuts to stack more and more 'players'.

Boston and Golden State were mostly built. You should be rooting for them.

@bad-at-lurking

If staff did 1 scene for 1 players PC every day, then 30 players would have a scene once a month, or so.

As someone who averages about 1 scene every three months, due to my schedule, this would mean a lot to me and 29 other players.

I see what you’re getting at, but if you can only manage schedule 1 7-person scene once a week, you’re getting the same mileage. If you can engage your players consistently one on one, you may be able to encourage more activity by providing them with leads to get other players involved.

Just another perspective.

@warma-sheen

These days, Tom Brady needs Pete Carroll or Kyle Shanahan to win a Super Bowl. Or not have a Manning or Raven involved.

@bad-at-lurking

Maybe we play on different places, but my experience has been the opposite.

When I ST a solo event, it goes a lot faster, and the RP decision-making is substantially deeper.
I find it easier to manipulate the action to exploit a PC’s past and weaknesses one-on-one. And I would warrant the solo PC has a better experience that way.

I also question whether coming up with a model to justify the bias is a good idea.