Posts made by Ganymede

@arkandel said in Descent Reboot:

What's your priority when you're rewriting the material? For instance are you concerned about balancing the Covenants against each other?

My concern with blood magic is, yes, balancing the Covenants against one another insofar as "specials" are concerned. But it is also expansive: whereas 2E only provided 3 Coils and Scale sets, plus about 10 rituals per Cruac and Theban Sorcery, I'm on track to produce 30 Paths (5 rituals each) for 6 Covenants/Conspiracies.

I've been sidelined by RL a bit, but I should be back on track in a couple of weeks.

@arkandel said in The Basketball Thread:

Yao is one of those could-have-beens. If Tracy McGrady had stayed uninjured, if China wasn't playing him every summer to the ground... if...

Could-have-beens? Yao was fantastic. His impact to the NBA is something that is scarcely noticed, but which a lot of owners know about and love.

During his injury-riddled tenure, he was a dominant force for the Rockets. He played in a big market that became a huge one. He brought the NBA into China, the league's second-biggest market. The NBA is so popular in China now that, when the L.A. Kings played a hockey game there fans showed up because they heard that Kobe Bryant was going to be there (he wasn't, but there was a message from Kobe before the game).

He finished his career with a respectable 19.0 PPG, and just under 10 RB/GM. What made him a threat was that his FT percentage always hovered around 80-85 percent, which meant you couldn't just hack at him (like you could with Shaq). In the era where dominant Cs were phased out in favor of flashy PGs, Yao is in the conversation with Dwight Howard, in terms of quality players: you don't want to build a franchise around him, but he's pretty damn handy to have in the paint.

@arkandel said in The Basketball Thread:

All I want from the NBA this season is to not hear Giannis got injured.

Because that kid can do some stuff we haven't seen since Shaq, at least. And he has a freakin' work ethic.

Um. Yao?

@ixokai said in X-Men Utopia MUX:

On m1963, you make your sheet in game, and it gets automatically converted and put on the wiki (unless you make super weird formatting) for you on approval.

I know. I'm on your game.

What I meant was: it would be neat if all you had to do was make a wiki page. You know, just do that, and bamph, character. But, yes, I understand that people have misgivings about doing anything on a wiki.

@thenomain said in Alternate Game Systems:

Really I think my point was more that games need to teach you how to play it.

So your objection to Falkenstein, if there was an objection, is that no one taught you and your troupe how to play it?

I mean, I presume you had the core book. I recall it pretty plainly showing me and my troupe how to play it.

Oh well. Not important.

Sure, you have got a good point. I mean, Changeling: the Lost seems pretty clearly a game about trauma, but people keep trying to play pretty princess with it.

@autumn said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

My partner and I will now be moving 3/4 of the way across the country to a state where I have never previously lived, and do not yet have a job or even a job offer.

Why?

@thenomain said in Alternate Game Systems:

The point, however, was that it wasn't fun. It could have been, maybe, but it wasn't.

You mean you and your group didn't find it fun, right? Because me and my group found it a lot of fun.

I'm just talkin' Falkenstein here, man.

My story starts like this.

@theonceler said in Meanest (But Funniest) Thing You've Done in a Game:

Classic story.

Boy meets girl.

Boy falls for girl.

Boy and girl head off to a private room to fuck.

In one instance, girl starts to give the boy head before morphing into a Crinos and biting off his dick (doing 6 aggravated damage).

In another instance, girl gets boy to near completion before transforming into a swarm of black widow spiders and crawling all over him before skittering to the ventilation system.

Admittedly, you probably want to avoid any instance of oral sex with me.

@thenomain said in Alternate Game Systems:

What the game didn't do was help people figure out how to play. My gaming group, who loved original Changeling for instance, absolutely hated the CF card system. They attempted things specifically to fail them so they could dump cards from their hand and force a re-draw. So.

You could always limit the CF card system to where it matters, like in a plot.

The thing I like about it is that it is different. And it is brutally random at times. Sure, you can go ahead and fail a whole bunch of shit to game the system, but that makes you a system-gamer and, as far as I'm concerned, you can eat a bowl of dick for that.

The point of this thread, I think, is to present alternatives that could be fun. I think this could be fun. I could very well be very wrong.

@lotherio

@thenomain said in Alternate Game Systems:

Castle Falkenstein tried using cards, mainly for more of a LARP feel at the table, and enough people asked for dice mechanics that they came up with them.

R. Talsorian Games deliberately chose to use cards for thematic reasons too. Aside from that, having a hand of cards also means strategic decision-making. If you have a hand of shit cards, you're going to need to take some failures; however, if you have a mixed hand and you know you may need some success in the future, you can take some failures to increase the number of good cards in your hand. Plus, NPCs don't get the hand; they just pull from the deck.

So, think of it as having a set of results to use when you wish. Makes for an interesting game dynamic.

@lotherio said in Potential Game / Temperature Read:

... or paramilitaristic mobile home living pink flamingo on the lawn gangs led by Tim Thomerson.

Or Divine.

@auspice said in Potential Game / Temperature Read:

@Ganymede - do you have the book for it in PDF by chance?

sigh

NO.

sigh

I'll go find one, hold on.

@auspice said in Potential Game / Temperature Read:

I approve of anything with cards (look I own like, 80+ decks okay).
But I'm not sure on the Victorian era setting.

Then don't. It's just a setting. CF can really be applied to any time or place.

But cards are important. I think random PCs + random cards = fun and mayhem. Make it a wacky post-apocalyptic world where your enemies are robots, but not cool Cylons or deadly IG-88s, but instead WALL-Es. Nothing but WALL-Es.

@auspice said in Potential Game / Temperature Read:

...would anyone enjoy a game of randomized PCs? It'd be meant entirely to be tongue-in-cheek, satire, and a TVTropes playground.

I'd play it, for a long time.

If you could, use the old Castle Falkenstein system. Here's a primer/teaser from Wikipedia.

It gets really fun when you have shit cards.

@ghost said in Yes! More Micro-transactions! (Activision, WB Games and EA appreciation thread):

Oh, and...
@Admiral not the Hog Pit. Take that attitude elsewhere, please.

Excuse me, but that was my attitude, thank you.

@admiral

If you want to believe so. I just said "new gamers."

@ghost said in Yes! More Micro-transactions! (Activision, WB Games and EA appreciation thread):

Last I read, microtransactions account for 25% of all profits in the gaming industry.

Micro-transactions support the theory I have that most new gamers are fucking stupid.

Whatever. I hate you, I hate them.

@arkandel said in The Basketball Thread:

Nothing I see so far suggests the finals will be anything than Warriors - Cavs again though, with the Warriors winning fairly easily.

I guess this means that we'll be hearing more from Sir Charles on how awesome hockey is.

@Arkandel

Who pays that much attention to the A-D Team?

That said, every goddamned point guard is going to be in his face all the damn time. Beverley is a solid defender, but can you imagine putting Harden, Westbrook, Irving, Thomas, Paul, or any other damn fine PGs on him?

He's Johnny Football. He's got the talent, but he's going to wash up hard.

As for Melo? Yeah, he looked happy because he didn't have to carry the damn team, or feel the need to. Or be in the limelight, ripped on from all sides. Westbrook will be the shining beacon, and all Melo has to do is play the game. Plus, he was playing the Knicks and still got 22 points, which was better than Westbrook, who got the T-D.