Posts made by Ganymede

@arkandel said in RL things I love:

The Shape of Water.

Get out.

@coin said in Skills and Fluff in WoD:

i can't leave you people alone for a few weeks

You really can't.

Get Out.

@downwithopp said in Dead Celebrities 2018:

David Ogden Stiers, best known as Major Charles Emerson Winchester of MASH, the voice of Cogsworth in 'Beauty and the Beast' and Jamba in 'Lilo & Stitch', bladder cancer - 75.

And the Archdeacon in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Governor Ratcliffe in Pocahontas, and Mr. Maellard on Regular Show.

@the-sands said in Skills and Fluff in WoD:

I would dearly love for someone on the 'it's a rule' side to explain where I am mistaken, but explaining doesn't mean just stating 'it's a rule' and asking 'why don't you want to follow the rules?'

It's not a rule.

But, as Faraday pointed out, a Storyteller probably would not permit or heavily penalize an attempt by a Medicine 1 person to accomplish what a Medicine 4 people could do more easily, even if the former may have Intelligence 5 and the latter Intelligence 2. It's a judgment call, one that a Storyteller can easily justify using the skill descriptions.

The book expressly mentions that a person's expertise in a mental skill may not track precisely with the dots in a particular skill. (Chronicles of Darkness, p. 31.) But I don't think it's unfair for the Storyteller to make that call. There is a higher emphasis on knowledge, and the lack thereof, in the game, which is built into the increased penalty for an unskilled Mental skill roll. (Id.) In other words, Mental Skills are different.

@the-sands said in Skills and Fluff in WoD:

No. I still think they are fluff. I am trying to illustrate why it is silly to say they are 'rules'. Because as 'rules' they make absolutely 0 sense since you have to combine them with Attributes.

Going back to my first point, there's still absolutely nothing constructive about what you're stating here. It's your opinion -- I get that -- but so what?

To my second point, call 'em fluff, I'll call 'em garbage, and we're otherwise on the same level of apparent disdain.

@faraday said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

If I was going to venture onto a game with social combat, I would be far more comfortable on a system like his that with the traditional "roll Persuasion vs Willpower and do what they say."

The good news is that this isn't how many, if not all of us, see a social combat system working either. And it's definitely not the way I'd like it, and it's definitely not the way that the good people at White Wolf or Dream Pod 9 see it.

But there is a certain trickiness to the compromising and the language that, unsurprisingly, a lot of people aren't really hitting on in a way that satisfies everyone, really.

@the-sands said in Skills and Fluff in WoD:

More than that, do you plan on letting me play a Doctor with 1 Int and 3 Medicine? After all, the fluff says I'm a doctor and according to you that's all that matters, right?

You do understand that you're in the mildly constructive area, and yet aren't saying anything remotely constructive, I presume.

That said, frankly, I don't like "situational modifiers." I think they are garbage. I've seen them abused more times than I can count. "Oh, I'm wearing a nice dress -- +2 to my Socialize roll!" "Oh, wow, I'm wearing the make-up of Hollywood stars -- +2 to my Presence roll!" And so on, and so on.

sigh

The Storyteller in the Storyteller system is the person that awards these. If I'm in a scene with a Storyteller, sure, let her go ahead and give me a bonus or penalize my attempt, whatever, that's cool. Really, I'm good with it.

But, fuck, no, no you can't just claim that shit in a scene with other folks. Nope. No, no, no, nope. Just add your applicable pools, look at your Merits if you have them, and then go with it.

Don't even get me started on the garbage that results from people stacking specialties.

But, all of that said, there will be nice, clean rules for whatever game I happen to run. And one of them will be, yes: situational modifiers will only be doled out by GMs or by consent of every PC's player in the scene.

@kitteh

I don't think what you want is unreasonable, but what Faraday said, word for word, is correct and accurate.

FS3 isn't very good if you want to go from novice to expert in 6 months. At least, that's your and Faraday's opinion. You can go from Fair to Great in 7 months, if I'm not mistaken, in skills, while bumping an attribute during the same period is possible. That's +3 dice to what was once, what, a 4 or 5 dice pool? That's not bad. Trash Panda has become a very-violent Trash Panda in her lifespan as a result.

And you do have an issue with progression, right? Specifically, you have an issue with how slow the progression is in FS3. This is a reasonable issue to have, but if you do have that issue, then nothing I said in response was incorrect either.

As Faraday said, this is built into the system. It is, if you want to call it so, a system flaw. If you run your own game with FS3 (which I might do, later), then you can change this by halving the time between XP raises and increasing how much XP you get every week, etc. I don't think that'd be too difficult.

So, maybe I am misreading things, because I don't see an pejorative invective in pointing out a system's limitations, as written. All the more reason to, as said in a different thread, re-configure an RPG to satisfy a particular game's needs.

@kitteh said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

The idea that anyone is complaining about not being able to go from total noob to expert in no time flat is an obvious and egregious strawman that no one but you is raising.

Actually, you're the one that brought it up. Unless I'm misreading things, your criticism prior to Faraday's last was that FS3 hurts your RP because you like playing lesser-experienced PCs and growing them over time. This implies that you have an issue with the progression in FS3.

Frankly, I like FS3 because the experts don't always win. I can't tell you how many times I saw Spectre missing or not damaging Cylons, and Trash Panda miraculously made it through a frontal assault. It does what Faraday wants it to: simulate a modern combat situation. And it does it really well.

It's much worse in WoD[.]

As stated before, WoD 2E adjusts this and makes everything more-or-less on equal footing. The benefit to min-maxing rests only in the dice, not on the XP costs, due to linear progression.

@bored said in Repurposing a Tabletop RPG for MU* Play:

To be clear, I'm not saying it's a doomed endeavor or anything. I just think we need to dig deep and realize we've basically built new games on the mangled corpses of their original incarnations. Repeating basic WoD-isms in every 'new' system is probably the quickest way to assure we have all the same problems, right?

And people wonder why I pushed the schedule out almost a year for what looks like a Chronicles of Darkness game. I whole-heartedly concur with this. And I think if people actually read the Chronicles of Darkness core book closely, it becomes clear that it is meant to give you a structure for your game rather than fill in every little nook and cranny.

Some games are easily to mold into something new. WoD 2E is pretty easy; FUDGE/FATE is even easier. Harder games may have systems as simple as the Storyteller System, like L5R, but there are massive hurdles to do so, including, but not limited to, the need for constant GM judgment calls, the waffle-nature of the Honor and Glory systems, and so on. For D&D 5E, WH40K, and Battletech, there's the map.

So, the title is really good: you need to re-purpose your RPG if you are going to turn it into a MUSH. Innovators like Faraday and Apos (and crew) basically made their own systems, and good on them to do so.

@bobotron said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

Social health tracks have the same problem as 'roll dice ot influence' depending on how written. Taking 'social damage' still is going to trigger some people's agency complaints, because they will have to RP in some what that they don't want to. As well, there are Social and Mental stress/health tracks in Cortex as well. Mostly those end up 'putting you out of the fight' somehow.

I have no problem, personally, with social skills taking someone "out of the fight." Again, my concern is ensuring there is a mechanism to pull out of something that will cause another player to feel very uncomfortable.

@the-sands said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

Both characters went through CG. Both characters have earned the same amount of XP. However, Sam has Brawl-5 while George only has Brawl-3 because Sam has taken advantage of a flaw in the system. Other than that they are completely identical.

I follow what you're saying, and I agree. Mixing the two concepts leads to min-maxing. It's just a matter of mathematical optimization, and this benefits the veterans over the newbies.

So, as long as we continue to dodge value judgments, we can progress beyond the current quagmire, right?

@thenomain said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

Thus making it trivial to dominate a stat pool.

Well, it is an arms' race, I guess. But the linear progression makes sense for a system that draws successes from pools of dice. The Silhouette system uses a single determinant for success, as does the L5R system, so I feel it more appropriate to apply an exponential progression system.

Just my thought on the matter.

Poopyhead.

@faraday said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

If your source material tells me what a doctor should have, then groovy. The reason I brought it up is because multiple people in this thread have said "the descriptions in WoD suck so just ignore them" and it sounded like you were agreeing with them and saying that the mechanic alone should tell you what you need to know.

... but they do suck, and they are misleading.

Let's take Cate, for a moment. Based on your description, she should have Intelligence 3 and Medicine 3. That gives you a pool of 6 dice. But let's say Erin is really, really smart and gorgeous, like her player, but she hasn't the same training. So, she has Intelligence 5 and Medicine 1, which also gives her a pool of 6 dice. The skill description for Medicine at 1 is "Novice", Erin has the same pool as Cate, who is "Experienced." Thus, it is easy to get misled looking at the skill description and this is because the attributes are put on equal footing with them, in this system. The only way to figure out who is better in the Storyteller System (statistically speaking) is to look at what pool you have doing what.

Going to Bored's example of first aid response versus surgery, the Silhouette System does consider this disparity in its skills (even though, you could, as suggested, make two different skills). A First Aid Responder might be highly skilled at resolving basic injuries (high Skill Level, low Skill Complexity), whereas a Doctor might have less expertise, but can handle treating more complicated injuries with more complicated medical techniques (medium Skill Level, high Skill Complexity). This sort of complexity isn't easy to reflect in the Storyteller System, but that's also why, before 2E, there were Secondary Skills, for which GMs were directed to lower the difficulty for rolls.

@d-bone said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

So in systems like Faraday/WoD/L5R/Etc I tend to always min-max because they have multiplicative xp costs.

WoD 2E fixes this by making costs linear.

@sonder said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

Fallcoast was a pretty rushed job; I'm not proud of that but I was really trying to escape TR and all of the baggage that came with that. There were also some uh.. personality issues that I feel hampered its creation, along with 'Oh yeah, we'll totes get that done soon', and us not doing a good job of writing shit down.

If you recall, I was working on Fallcoast immediately post-TR, and I kind of said something along the lines of "I feel rushed" regarding setting up the vampire sphere.

I know that the CGen is mostly hand-done, but, to be honest, I prefer that, as a staffer. I will administrate the shit out of every little splat, if that means I don't have to tolerate actual day-to-day contact with people.

Filthy hobbitses.

I think -- I think -- that you may want to strongly consider winnowing down the number of alts per person. Seriously. That will really, really reduce your workload per player.

@jennkryst said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

FINALLY, I can't find the actual post to quote now, but someone else brought up the biggest point to me: we're all playing a game, not some hyper accurate reality simulator.

We're not daft, but I think the purpose of recent discussion has been "how can we make the game-playing experience better for more people"? A lot of people have expressed their preferences, made suggestions on how to make games better for them, and so on.

At least, that's how I'm taking it.

@sonder said in Visit Fallcoast, sponsored by the Fallcoast Chamber of Commerce:

I don't like Pete that much but we'll see what we can do.

Who the hell don't like Pete?

@faraday said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

Either way, the help files should offer guidance about what staff wants beyond "just go by the dice pool".

I agree, but if staff is helping folks coming in -- like you do -- then any misconceptions made thereby can be corrected too.

The Chronicles of Darkness nerfed text descriptions for attribute levels, but they do provide them for skills. In the core book, p. 34, it states that, for Medicine, a doctor would be considered "Experienced," which is the 3-dot level of expertise. Since I know that 2 dice is supposed to be the average level of attributes, I surmised that Cate, being smarter than average, would have an Intelligence of 3.

So, yes, my experience (Level 3!) guides me, but determining what levels you have in attributes and skills can be accomplished just be reading the source material, in my opinion.

That aside, as I said before, I really like the Silhouette system. The addition of the Skill Complexity variable allows for much greater skill definition. A pilot may have an Expert skill level (Level 4) in Piloting simple vehicles (Complexity 1), but if he is asked to handle an alien spacecraft (Complexity 4), he's going to have difficulty in getting a high result (the result is penalized by -3 for the Complexity difference), but it is still possible for him to succeed at a somewhat difficult Piloting task in that spacecraft (because he could feasibly roll 3 6s, which would be a result of 8, unmodified, or, perhaps he has high Wits, which would give a positive modifier to offset the negative one for the Complexity difference).

@faraday said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

Cate is a 3rd year Emergency Room resident physician who's pretty talented but not top of her class or anything. She's a little smarter than average - she got through medical school ok, but she's no genius.

What ratings are appropriate for that character's Medicine and Intelligence?

Intelligence 3 and Medicine 3.

I mean, I love Cate, but --

If you were using the Silhouette system, you'd probably have Intelligence +1, and Medicine 3/3.