Posts made by Ganymede

@zombiegenesis

I remember that game being really bonkers and unbalanced, but that was the name of the game.

I definitely have wish fulfillment in my RP. Most of them are violent sociopaths. “Little Ball of Hate” is what I aspire to.

But they are more successful at it, with fewer consequences, than I am RL.

@ghost

This sounds very awful and I offer my sympathy. I've been through a similar situation, but made a choice which I know is hard for anyone who isn't a cat or a robot.

One of my best friends. When things are good they're great, but every 2nd or 3rd game night it's just this massive black cloud that's REALLY difficult to navigate.

I can't speak for your feelings, and I know that there is more to the story as to why this person is one of your best friends, but I can't help but feel that you are telling yourself that they are so close in order to justify the guilt you feel in wanting to tell them off. Further, I think you want to justify why you feel like a bad friend even though you're not the one acting badly. Said another way, you may consider them a friend, but I don't think they are treating you like one.

I offer this anecdote.

My best friend back home was my first girlfriend. We have known each other for over 25 years. (Fuck, I'm old.) She got married, had her first child, and then was struck by nasty post-partem depression. During the course of her treatment, she developed mania and severe anxiety. She didn't tell me a thing about it for two years, during which she never returned my calls or texts. But when she did finally reconnect, she explained simply: I didn't talk to you because I didn't want my problems to be your problems. I disagreed with her strategy, but I can understand that what she did had good intentions.

I'm not seeing that here.

I want to approach them as a brother and recommend counseling and seeing a doctor about it, but I'm afraid they'll go super edgelord about it or storm off out of the friendship out of "chase me" rage.

I will borrow from Hagakure here, as I do these days:

"There is something to be learned from a rainstorm. When meeting with a sudden shower, you try not to get wet and run quickly along the road. But doing such things as passing under the eaves of houses, you still get wet. When you are resolved from the beginning, you will not be perplexed, though you still get the same soaking."

If your friend wants help, they will listen; if they do not, they will not; so there is nothing to do but accept that the result is actually out of your control.

@faraday said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

FS3 combat is a good example of why I don't think the question of game and story has to be either/or. It exists not because of a "game first" mentality, but just because it's nigh-impossible to do a wholly cooperative combat scene with a dozen players in a tolerable timeframe. It's a tool of convenience, nothing more. Rolls can be similar - two players could just RP a sparring match, or they could throw in a few rolls to add some chance and/or guidance for how things go. You can do both.

FS3 combat is also a good way for my PCs to get their crotches destroyed.

Yes, there are stories behind that.

Anyhow, I've nothing further to add at this point. I adore FS3 combat.

@silverfox

Sorry about that.

More relevant message: if y'all need something to help the fostering of humans or kittens, please let us know. Also, kitten pictures are always welcome. (Human pictures, not so much because of doxxing potential.)

@ghost said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

"Is it a GAME or a Cooperative Writing Hobby?"

My consistently-presented third option: "Or is it an improv acting activity?".

@arkandel said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

It's perfectly legitimate to feel disappointment.

I concur with this. I don't mean to suggest that players should just deal with failure as it comes because it is an inevitability. (This is in accord with my adherence to the Path of Emo.) I mean to say that I think it is a good idea to promote the concept of choice, and that the available systems, particularly the Chronicles of Darkness, does a good job in not only providing choice, but also a little sugar to make the pill easier to swallow, e.g., the Sanctity of Merits rule. Having that sugar I think substantially improves the chances that players will not be as soured long-term in failures, especially if they had a bit of a hand in it.

That said, and ultimately, whether IC failures cut like a knife or not largely depends on the game's culture.

@silverfox

I hope the motherfuckers who were setting fireworks in my street and then left their shit on the street all night get the joy of watching everything they love burn and scream in a fiery blaze.

For a nation who claims to live their troops, most people in my part of the country are assholes to PTSD-suffering veterans.

@faraday said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

In short, we want players who show good sportsmanship. I don't think bribing them for tanking +rolls is the way to accomplish that goal.

I concur in part and dissent in part.

Yes, what I am saying is that we need to promote good sportsmanship in the face of defeat; however, I am a proponent for incentivizing failure as a plot device or an element of player agency. This can have some beneficial effects. For example, in the Chronicles of Darkness, a player can surrender to a beatdown in exchange for a small XP reward; aside from the benefit to the player's character, it is also a benefit to the GM whose NPC initiates the beatdown because it saves a lot of dice-throwing. The same system also allows you to take a negative Condition (which results in future penalties) in exchange for an immediate benefit (the removal of Doors) in a social interaction. This idea of allowing a player to choose a negative in order to get a positive is a very underrated part of the system as a whole that in practice makes running a game so much easier once players buy into it.

So, I don't think that we're talking about bribes; I am, at least, trying to suggest that providing options to players may get them to accept the give-and-take that should exist in a good game session. That said, I can see how a person could consider a reward-for-surrender system as a bribe-to-tank.

@arkandel said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

There's a gap here I'm not sure is being bridged.

I don't think there's a gap in all responses, especially mine.

We are talking about two things, though. Some of us are discussing whether there are mechanics that can reward failure or reward players for voluntarily failing. Others are discussing whether there can or should be rewards for failures decided by staff/GMs. Some are talking about both.

But the overarching issue is how to convince players that failure is not only possible, but possibly rewarding in its own right. Mechanics that reward failure or ameliorate failure mean nothing if the players still react negatively to failure. So, for me, and some others, this is a culture issue, one that is not going to be solved by mechanics or policy or without staff and players willing to buy in.

@devrex said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

You can lead by example, but that's about all you can do.

That's pretty much what I'm thinking.

@runescryer

Okay. I’ll start writing. Let’s PM.

@derp

I write. It’s what I do. I am pretty confident I can write a good Werewolf setting too.

@runescryer

Okay. If you change your mind, I have some free time now to write a nice, complete setting.

I think you may get the most mileage out of a single sphere Vampire or Changeling game.

@misadventure

It sounds like someone was goofing around with sheets.

Frankly, if I discovered this, I would have a very similar response.

Because, man, doing XP audits really, really, really sucks.

And, yes, I have done them before.

Thankfully, this is NWoD v.2, where everything is raised based on a linear progression, as opposed to the exponential-rise in value in NWoD and OWoD.

@faraday

Your last paragraph illustrates what I think is an important social force on these games: success is always expected.

I’m not sure how to address it mechanically. This is a matter of who you can attract to your game. BSG:U had a lot of great players who were unafraid of failing, but did not set out to do so. And those are the kind of players you can build a game around.

The desire to have a great character and to be a good player are two separate things, and I would encourage game designers to seek and prioritize the latter.

I wanted to post a quick note that today will be my last day as an administrator on MSB. I am resigning and, as of July 1, 2022, I will no longer be an active administrator in the moderation of the site's boards or in the deciding of rules and policies.

Your active staff will continue to be: derp, reimesu, Lotherio, and Runescryer.

I will remain, however, as the person paying for the site and occasionally giving advice, like Arkandel. But that's all I'll be doing.

This decision is mine alone and is based on personal matters.

I look forward to finding the time to play with y'all in the future, but as of tomorrow I will enjoy my retirement.

@ghost said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

Like a TT player I'd try to stay in my lane and not try to Hog the scene, but then someone(s) would just bowl over that goodwill, try to do everything, and try to Hog all the attention/xp. Left me feeling like my fairness and trying to be conscientious of others was being taken advantage of. I know it made me passive aggressive more than once.

This reminds me of a time on BSG:U where we grunts were all on a mission to free some prisoners. We split into teams in order to deal with the situation, with some folks (who were good with guns) looking out for trouble while other folks (who were good with sneaking) went in and tried to do their thing. If I recall correctly, things went horribly wrong, with half the team going down at some point, but we did manage to get the prisoners out, and get back to base. And this was due to the scene-runner creating a situation where everyone could shine, even if some of us failed to do so.

That scene-runner was Faraday.

Faraday's game made it really difficult to do everything. You couldn't fly a fighter and be a ground-pounder. If you were a Marine, you couldn't be a great shooter and also a great auxiliary. So it made it easier (and this is not to take away from how good she was at managing scenes) for any scene-runner to allow everyone to take their place.

Ultimately, aside from player-restrictions, the only way to ensure that everyone is having a good time is to have staff who are competent at doing this. This is not an easy task. But you can also select game mechanics or a system that assist staff in this task. So, in my opinion, your game mechanics or system is critical in the task of ensuring that everyone is having a good time because you cannot control the limitations of your players and are never guaranteed the quality of staff you have.

@arkandel said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

To use factors from that short list above, if my character and yours are both trying to become the new Sheriff but I only have two hours a week to log on and you are on every night, your PC simply has a better chance of making it.

In this situation, I think staff would need to decide whether the new Sheriff needs to be on for only two hours a week. Whether a character is put into a place of IC power is a little different than failing a roll.

What I'd ask though is whether we can - or should - systematize so that even when I don't get to play the Sheriff the impact from 'losing' is mitigated.

I find this example difficult to work with because whether a player's character gets a particular role on a game or in a setting, if it is of some importance to the game or setting, should be determined not from a roll but from the player.

I would be the first to say that, given my limited time to play, I do not expect and should not expect to be given a position of IC importance. That's just a recipe for eventual burnout. I do not think there ought to be some sort of compensation for what is a purely personal issue.

I thought we were talking about game systems which incentivize failure in resolving conflict.