Posts made by Ganymede

@WTFE said in RL Anger:

Well, I don't claim it's harmless. I was just dubious of "it's just as bad as cigarettes" since by all accounts this is emphatically not true.

Frankly, I haven't seen reliable studies either way. Look at it this way: much like using a bong, vaporized material is far easier to inhale than smoked material. I've seen people suck in massive amounts of cloud-like vapor in a way that I've seen few cigarette smokers. That shit can't be good for you, and is definitely not harmless.

Personally, vaping is actually harder for me to stomach. That glycerine makes my lungs feel like they've been caked in asphalt after a couple of minutes, something that I simply don't get from cigarettes. Given that cigarettes have this huge stigma, I smoke socially and on occasion; however, whereas vaping is found more acceptable due to the lack of an unpleasant aroma (no matter how pungent) vapers are doing it far more they would normally smoke.

Smoking cigarettes. Smoking weed. Inhaling vapor. It's all probably a bad thing, and the delivery of more nicotine seals the deal for me. That shit is downright awful to your body.

So, my argument is anecdotal, and should be given the same weight.

But, as @Thenomain said, vapers around our parts are downright asses about that shit, and need to be given a fucking steel-toed colonoscopy more often than not.

@Arkandel said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

How does your system handle catching up to oldbies (if it does)?

In other words if you create today and I created three months ago, assuming similar playstyles will you be able to ever close the ability gap between our characters?

Two ways.

First, with exponential costs, it takes more time to develop your skills to elite levels. Since all PCs start off with the same periodic Time allotment, being an oldbie means taking longer to get an extra dot above.

Second, the more you have, the less you get. Holdings; status; high-level skills: all of these can reduce the periodic Time allotment. In a GMC/CoD system, for example, you could penalize Time by a PC's Status or number of Attributes and Skills at 4+. The reasoning: you have to hone your connections, reputation, and skills to keep at such a high level of expertise.

Put these two together, and newer PCs will advance faster. You may never fully catch up with oldbies that are active, but you'll close the gap over time. There seems to be little reason to cripple active oldbies.

At some point, if it becomes an issue for lower level folks to make up the distance, there may be higher starting point allotments.

@Arkandel said in RL Anger:

Think of a company where everyone gets their lunch break at noon, and suddenly you have people rushing to get there first to 'tag' the resting area for themselves.

Most companies provide resting areas indoors. Some provide them outdoors as well. In the case of the latter, the smokers have one place to go; the non-smokers have two. And you are a thorough asshole if you, a non-smoker, decide to park your ass in the outdoor area and bitch when the smokers come out to the only place they are allowed to take a break and do something legal.

Be fucking considerate. I am. When I smoke (which is not often during the day), I do it somewhere that few people are bound to bump into me, except for other smokers. And it does piss me off a bit when people wander on through and complain because, those fuckheads are invading my smoking space.

It bugs me a bit more when it comes to vapers because those motherfuckers think they're the cock of the walk for engaging in a behavior that is likely just as damaging to others, and yet act like they are God's fucking gift to the world. Like, let me see if you vape when you fart after I kick that fucking device twelve-inches up your ass, fuckface.

Don't even get me started on vapers who walk into places with a NO FUCKING SMOKING SIGN, and then bitch about how it's not illegal for them to vape around others and that their rights are being trampled on. Like fucking join the club, assholes, and take it fucking outside you saprophytic shitwipes.

@Lotherio said in Suitable system for a gritty fantasy game:

Side tangent: FS3 is action oriented (sci fi) and most fantasy isn't.

Most, but not all. And I'd really like an action-based fantasy game, because the Lords and Ladies shit gets boring really fucking quick.

@Misadventure said in RL Anger:

As long as your smoke doesn't travel outside where you sit, its all good.

You ever look downwind?

If you fucking sit on a patio next to someone who smokes, you accept the consequences. Failing to do so makes you the fucking nuisance.

@surreality said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

Between the two, though, I think learning times still result in the much lesser evil. 'You get rewarded for your efforts' should be a constant. 'You get rewarded for your efforts up to a point, or unless staff gets lazy' is powerfully discouraging and rightly feels unfair. The players who are the most generous with their time and are doing the most to keep your game alive through running things for others are typically the ones most hurt by this.

Going back to the system I proposed a page ago, I do not believe it hinders or rewards people based on their active-time; that is, it is not advancement based on activity. However, I believe it encourages activity because you can advance faster through cooperation and collaboration.

One of the things that nWoD did right was tying everything to XP. By making costs exponential, you had to devote more time to getting an extra point, which follows on the law of diminishing returns. What it does not account for is XP gain on a MU*, which is what I hope my system (which is based on a constant Time allotment) will do is level the playing field further between rookies and veterans.

I think it is important to consider abandoning using XP or advancement as a carrot for activity. While it can be an incentive to be active, a system that links advancement solely to activity is going to lose a large number of good players who cannot be online all the time.

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

And that dress is downright demure. jfc. I think that official just had a favored competitor he was afraid would lose to her.

I just think the official didn't have a thing for pretty schoolgirls. Pretty schoolboys, on the other hand --

I fucking hate that they went with an Evade ability over Cover. Because cover now seems pretty fucking difficult to stay behind.

Then again, that may be the point.

The environments are pretty, but the models still seem like they were ripped from ME:3.

@WTFE said in Suitable system for a gritty fantasy game:

I can see how FS3 would suit a game that's oriented toward battles and, in particular, large battles. For that, I would likely withdraw any objections I have to FS3. Thing is, the games I've seen it used in weren't oriented to large battles.

So, FS3 might not be good for them. We get that.

Do you have any suggestions on what to use? Frankly, I don't think one exists. I think you have to go homebrew because everyone has their own idea as to what sort of fantasy world they want to create. A Final Fantasy game is going to need different code and systems than a Witcher game, for instance.

@surreality said in Course Corrections:

@mietze said in Course Corrections:

What's wrong with staff saying "Clearly you've put thought into this and we respect that but it's not a direction the game is going to go, no matter what you roll, by our choice?"

This is exactly what I was wondering about.

To be clear, I did not say there was anything wrong with saying the above. But the topic is on course correction, right? So, to extrapolate from the original poster: what would you do in this situation?

I don't think there's a general rule, but there seems to be a general consensus that wackiness -- complete off-the-wall horseshit -- is what we'd normally bar, but some of us have a sliding scale on the rest of it.

@Ghost said in Course Corrections:

IC development cannot upset the logical power level of a game.

I want to hook on this because this is really what I've been getting at. This really should just be the cardinal rule.

When I get my dark fantasy game up and running, I don't care if someone wants to try to make a flintlock rifle, but I will tell them they are starting from scratch. I may even give them a rough estimate of how long it would take, time-wise, to get there: probably around a decade of constant experimentation and time-spending. Assuming they are okay with that, they can certainly bring their device to a battle, and it'll make a lovely weapon for the 15 seconds it takes for a mage to locate and explode them with a lightning bolt or for an ogre to absorb the bullet right before he bites the PC's head off.

And when they complain about why I would insist on making the process so realistic, I would not hesitate to tell them that if they want to remove the "fantasy game" shackles then they have to stop fantasizing about how awesome firearms might be in a world of demons, dragons, magic, and gods.

@Arkandel said in Course Corrections:

If I want epic high fantasy then guns just don't fit in that. It's not that they'd be overpowered, it's that thematically I want magical singing swords, not muskets.

If the magical singing swords are demonstrably more powerful and easier-to-use than a musket, no one's going to want one. Except for the crazy dude that gets his head chopped off by a villain with a magical singing sword.

@Derp said in What does advancement in a MU* mean to you?:

And if I start my own game, it'll probably end up a lot like that.

In a system I'm working on, everything is related to time. You can convert it to XP to advance your stats, use it to harvest for resources, spend it to build shit, etc. But the more holdings you build, status you cultivate, the less time you have because of the implied maintenance of the same. The more you accumulate, the slower you can advance.

This balances newbs and dinos. Dinos have a lot of stuff to maintain, and have less time to do other things. Newbs have less things to maintain, and can dedicate more time to building themselves up. As newbs catch up, dinos can collaborate with newbs so that the work to maintain the kingdom/empire/faction is split, thus allowing dinos to start to advance again.

@tragedyjones said in CofD and Professional Training:

What are people's thoughts on the Professional Training merit? Is it mandatory for a good build? If so should it be free? Do you love it? Hate it?

Hate it. Can it. Only permissible on a mortal-only game, for me.

@Paris said in Course Corrections:

I don't see why it's necessary to feel like you have to (be the one to) 'advance' a game's technology. They wanted a pre-gun setting, go join a game with guns, or start one, instead of trying to force that kind of theme change (slow or not). You can affect things as a player without needing to do that, why the fixation?

The discussion is on the reasoning, is all. The explanation of "this game is based on the Middle Ages / Renaissance, and therefore has no guns" holds no water with anyone with a working understanding of history. Even "this is a fantasy game" doesn't really mean much, given how many fantasy RPGs, like Warhammer and Final Fantasy, have a weird amalgam of technology and magic woven together.

If someone wants to try and invent the firearm, let them. Explain to them the steps necessary to get there, which may include having to research past experiments, conduct them, learn laws from them, apply those laws to the model, re-experiment, etc. After six months of jumping through hoops, you can calmly explain to them that this is what scientists and engineers have to go through to innovate, and if you want to bring a novel, new, world-changing technology, it isn't going to happen with a couple of rolls.

There are super-crazy ideas out there, but firearms in a Lords & Ladies game aren't crazy. Just really stupid.

@surreality said in Course Corrections:

I don't think it's necessary to, say, uncreate bats just so people won't make gunpowder from guano (though if someone wants to do that, that's their call and I support their right and choice to make it), or perhaps more accurately, I do not feel it should not be necessary to go that far in order to be able to say: we really don't want to go in that direction with this game/do not want to drastically change the game world in the ways that idea would inevitably change it.

My objection to taking such a stance is how horridly insipid it is relative to the development of modern firearms, which took almost 1,000 years. Plus, gunpowder existed, but was seldom used during the late medieval/renaissance period of European history, from which much of fantasy seems to be lifted from. (For example, full suits of plate armor did not exist until after cannons were used in the Battle of Crecy, 1346.)

I'm sure that @faraday will come to hate me for saying this, but --

-- this game is excellent. Top down. From the simple CGen process to the wiki to the code, the game is well-designed, constantly improved, and clearly loved by the players and staff.

You should really try it for a war story.

Having done this shit for 20+ years, the game takes me back to a time when game owners really took a lot of time to put together their environment. It reminds me of RobotechMUSH, where I first got my MU*ing feet under me. There are events. There is RP. And, bizarrely, it is all apparently done by a single staff member.

I like the World of Darkness. Played it for years. But this reminds me that I have missed a lot of innovations and MU*ing experiences, and I regret having been so lazy and ingrained so as to have been so focused on a single genre.

Hats off here. Really. I've missed a lot in the past decade, clearly. And I now wish I hadn't.

@Paris said in Course Corrections:

They are usually transplants from forum or LJ type games, and are getting used to MUSH, in my experience. Eventuslly some folks get the hang of it, though it's tough to switch if you are still rping in both formats.

Yours is a wise and reasoned response. Mine is more visceral, and should probably be discounted appropriately.

@faraday said in Course Corrections:

Really? Them using an innocuous phrase like "gunmetal gray" or "okay" is impacting your enjoyment of the game? Really? I mean, if so okay, I'll take your word for it. It just seems strange to me, that's all.

The example here isn't the greatest, I'll admit, but I know that fantasy games are a bit tighter on theme than others, for reasons. But, if I may:

• I explained (spoilers) that BSG takes place thousands of years before Earth history, so trademarked names, pop culture references to stuff like Star Wars, haven't happened yet. So I politely clarified that this isn't in Earth's future, but it's past.
• She barked at me via pages for harassing her (this was approx 10 pages, and she hadn't told me to stop paging her, there was no bitchy language), and then complained about me to staff.
• Staff reached out to me and basically told me "we agree with you but to keep things calm, give her some room"
• I gave her room, moved on.

Again, for me, I'd have less of a problem with the use of "LEGO" than I would with reporting me to staff for trying to keep the theme/setting intact by offering helpful pointers, only to be told, in so many words, to suck it up princess because I want to play fucking LEGOs instead of engaging in the already-set theme/setting.

I mean, I play on BSG: Unification. I have to consciously not toss in references to Prentice-Hall or Houghton Mifflin Harcourt when talking about my PC's penchant for textbooks, or Shakespearean quotes. But I try because I know that the pop-culture references aren't really found in the BSG world.

Because if you've played with me on a WoD, I like to pepper my poses with counter-interpellative cultural references and memes for humor value.

@surreality said in RL Anger:

This isn't exactly anger, but I can't call it something I love. More something that makes me wince with all the wincing: the husband sent a link to a show we watched as kids back in the 80s.

You watched Tales of the Gold Monkey? Bravo.