Posts made by Ganymede

@WTFE said:

Anonymous complaints are the single worst way to reduce drama in a body of human beings that has ever been conceived.

In the American Justice System, people are entitled to face their accuser. This is why, except in limited circumstances, there are no anonymous civil complaints. In MU* land, however, we have no obligation to adhere to any higher sense of justice or morality, as MU*s do not hold the power of life or death over you.

I don't like anonymous complaints. As an adjudicator, I want to know who the accuser is. But that does not mean I have any obligation to disclose this to the accused.

It is far easier not to be an asshole.

@Coin said:

This was a horrible idea, mostly because this sort of system would flounder and be to the detriment of the laissez-faire attitude that Fallcoast was bringing from The Reach. I mean, I get why you wanted to--but it wasn't going to work, which I guess is why you bowed out early.

You're presuming it would fail. That would presume I had not taken, or would not take, into consideration The Reach's background and Fallcoast's direction.

It was not going to work because, despite having not been given any deadlines to propose a theme and setting, Troy and Spider wanted to bring the Vampire Sphere online upon opening, a date and time for which I was never asked about. I very clearly stated what I wanted to do, and that it would take time to develop and implement, but this objection to opening was essentially overruled because they wanted to get the game up sooner rather than later.

I have always been a proponent of carefully planning out a game before bringing it up. I left staff because I took objection to the rapid, haphazard manner in which Fallcoast was created and developed. I knew I could not work in a staff environment where, having been given the responsibility to do something with no set timeline, I would be expected to fall in line with others. That's simply not how I operate, or will operate.

The split was not acrimonious, but, if it were, I would be one throwing my hands up and saying "I can't work like this."

@Coin said:

I would honestly encourage people who like this model to try their hand at making a game that follows it.

I tried to do this on Fallcoast.

I am putting together a proposal for coders to set up a game that follows RfK's model.

@Alzie said:

I am so confused by this. So, you're saying she shouldn't be happy that her game succeeded? That anyone that finds joy in the fact that their game succeeded is engaging in the construction of a personality cult? That is a narrow view. One you've probably engaged in.

This seems overly and unnecessarily defensive.

Connecting one's sense of self-worth with the following created from one's works can be problematic. I can understand how someone would get the impression that Shav was a little too connected with her game, i.e., how she would state, clearly, that she was very emotional about it, that she sometimes could not sleep because of it, etc. I don't think that's healthy.

"Cult of personality" is probably the wrong term for this.

@Misadventure

Even I did not understand what, if anything, you were getting at.

@Glitch said:

Werewolves can totally buy moon gifts as well, unless it's house-ruled on Eldritch.

As with most things White Wolf publishes, this point is directly contradicted. In this case, the description of each Moon Gift makes it clear that it is available only to certain Auspices.

What I think the writers intended to include was a mechanism to switch Auspices. I did not find that mechanism in my cursory search of the book.

So, you can learn more than one Moon Gift, but Moon Gifts may only be learned by a particular Auspice.

@Derp said:

A world of difference? Eh. They give you an edge, but not so much of one that they make it impossible for other people to one-up you.

Maybe we're splitting hairs here, but being able to roll Brawl and Weaponry with 8-again as a Level 1 Gift seems to grant more than a slight edge to Rahu in close combat. If you think that's a small edge, consider that the Gift of Strength (Purity) also bumps your Strength by your Purity score.

@Derp said:

Eh. I have to disagree, here. While yes, you have certain affinities that make certain things come easier to you, there is nothing preventing you from buying other things as well. Short of the Moon Gifts, any werewolf can buy anything, and once it's unlocked, adding facets is all the same price, assuming you have the relevant renown.

Moon Gifts make a world of difference, but I'll concede that the other Gifts can be purchased at a higher cost. So, you can make a combat-ready Elodoth, but the system stacks it so it's easier to be the negotiator/judge.

@Cobaltasaurus said:

I lived in a house with three children, all under the age of 5. That house was kept in better condition. Yes, children use dishes more but the dishes were done on a daily basis than more than one just one (normally my boyfriend, but I do them as well but not as much -- though I think since I'm not in school right now it's at the point where my boyfriend and I both do the dishes each day, and yet some how they are never clean).

You need to fucking move, bitch. I fucking hate people that don't do their fucking dishes. In college, I lived in a house where everyone had their designated night to do the dishes, and, if they forgot, we barged into their room in the middle of the night and punched them until they got up and did them.

I'm not kidding. Have that happen once, and you won't forget. Apply that here.

@Wizz said:

I think that I had a conversation about this with @Thenomain at one point -- that he wasn't a fan of Werewolf because Werewolves are Werewolves and that there's not much more to them, and I don't think I can disagree with that in 2E. It's cool to be an apex predator, but I kind of miss 1E's hints of a broader identity. They weren't just hunters, they were guardians and lore-keepers and shamans and lords.

I don't think the game limits the potential of players either.

You can be the reluctant Rahu. You can be the bumbling Irraka. You can be the stay-at-home Cahalith. That's not limited at all.

But try as you may, the Rahu are best at one role. They can struggle against it all they want, and that makes for excellent internal character tension. As much as Ralph wants to be loved and seen for his thoughtful side, his Alpha is going to want him to Wreck-It because that's what he's built to do.

You can devise characters around features, and have as much fluidity as you want. But you will hunt, and your target generally leads you to one Tribe or another.

@Luna said:

Um. Thanks federal government for making me mail a notarized letter that says for real my financial aid is for school. What is this I can't even.

Fraud is rampant. That is, fraud committed by the schools is rampant.

@Wizz said:

Now it's like, you're an Iron Master because you hunt people, the end.

I find this more of a feature than a flaw. The obvious focus in Werewolf 2e is the hunt. The Tribes dictate what you're best at hunting, and the Auspices dictate how you go about participating in the hunt. It limits concepts in that there really aren't any wolves that don't hunt, but I think that's part of the game.

@Arkandel

At least you weren't doing Romanian deadlifts.

@Coin said:

I would like to see the breakdown of how the beat-sheet system worked, mostly because the way we're doing it on Eldritch is a little hard to control. This isn't to say I want to switch, because I have no idea how it works, but I am asking to see what other people have done because it interests me.

Essentially, you log in reasons for getting a beat. There are categories of reasons: a scene with another PC; a thematic scene; running an event; etc. You also got beats for "votes" from others. All such beats were capped off; for instance, you could only get 7 bears from "votes" every cycle. Each cycle lasted a week.

Every +beatsheet was submitted for review weekly. And it was reviewed personally by Shav, and then Myno after. It was labor-intensive.

@Thenomain said:

I want an audio recording of Gany snapping, "IN YO FACE" to be my new text notification sound.

I'll deliver one to you the next time I swing out your way.

Definitely not an idle Prince. He attended a meeting I ran yesternight, actually.

I concur with everything lordbelh said. The RfK experiment proved that you can run a vampire sphere that doesn't explode due to "IN YO FACE" force. In fact, it proved that operating an effective off-screen influence system is the key to doing so.

Far be it for me to propose that on another game, though, right? Because who the fuck listens to me, unless it's several years down the road?

@Coin

In the homebrew system I'm cobbling together slowly, combat becomes an exercise in inflicting Tilts/Conditions/Statuses on each other until one gets an "exceptional" success over the other, thus ending the combat. The system is not crunchy at all, and it's designed that way. I've tried to emphasize the importance of tactical choices, and incorporate Tech-based and Biotic attacks.

So, for instance, if you're playing a Tech-heavy Engineer PC and meet a Krogan Battlemaster, you're not going to be able to beat him in ranged or close physical combat. But you could use your Omni-Tool to tag him with a few Tilts/Conditions/Statuses to make him defenseless, and then put him down with a pistol whip.

@Coin said:

Did you also date a girl who ended up leaving you for another dude who ended up running a RuneQuest game and killing your character with a fucking Jack-o-Bear because he was still at odds with you even though he "won" (ugh, he actually said this to me) and just wanted to be a dick about it?

No. I didn't date girls back then.

P.S. I totally schooled him in Magic, though, so it's all right. #highschoolpriorities

I played Magic for about six months before I discovered Jyhad, later V:TES, which is infinitely superior.

@Cobaltasaurus said:

The proposal is for a Mage game, so I'm presuming it's Mage + Mortal (and by that, I also mean Mortal+). So, for that kind of game, 1 alt is just fine.

On social influence, RfK's system is a good model. I would simplify it substantially, mind, but it has the effect of creating a mundane political mini-game that Supers and Mortals can play with in the background. It generates a surprising amount of RP.

On the XP system proposed, RfK is again my model. There, you can claim beats for having a scene (1), meeting or working towards an aspiration (1), RPing a particular theme (1), attending an event (1), resolving a Condition (1), and other events. You can also give a Beat for good RP, which they call Squees. The amount of beats you can accumulate in a particular time frame for a particular type of claimed beat is capped. And you have to provide a brief justification for each claimed beat.

This system is very labor-intensive for staff, who have to check each PC for claimed beats on a weekly basis. However, it has the side-benefit of providing a "player RP report" on a weekly basis, from which staff can figure out what's going on, who's doing what, and so on. The other side-benefit is that players can also keep track of what they've done, using the system to log their weekly activities.

@Coin said:

I used to play RuneQuest in highschool.

Same here. Funny that.