@Sockmonkey said in Good TV:
@Wretched I kind of skimmed through Arrow out of necessity because I was drawing on an Arrow sketch card set once. I couldn't get into it; it really bugged me that that his facial scruff grew down his neck. Just .. shave, man. Shave that neck.
I liked that season of Arrow where all of his friends were angry at him for not sharing important information or making an executive decision without their consent.
Also known as: every season of Arrow
@surreality ugh, either way, I'm more in your court. The number of self inflicted wounds by people trying to find rp only results in stupid OOC shit that ruins everyone's fun. The Hobby's fine, but truly, I'm getting pretty fed up by the negging/predatory/drama queen types that chase the sane people out of the hobby.
@Ghost That's basically every single CW show. About 70% of the plot would be gone if only people with every reason to talk to each other spoke to each other.
I joke about Supernatural often:
On ODD numbered seasons, Dean is mad at Sam for sacrificing himself. On EVEN numbered seasons, Sam is mad at Dean for sacrificing himself. For the first 6 episodes of EVERY season they're angry at each other until the inevitable bro-hug moment.
@Arkandel Fair enough. I need to reel it in a bit. I just hate seeing people do predatory things and then get what they wanted out of it.
See ya 'round. My continued presence in this thread won't be constructive. Thanks for gibbsmacking me into ducking out.
CLARIFICATION ON MY LEGO-LASS EXPERIENCE
It was on an older, now extinct BSG game that no longer exists.
It basically went like this:
WORKIN WIT GHOST
Coworker: "Probably gonna do the Dr. Scholls thing."
Me: "Hey, did you know that Dr. Scholls guy used to be in IT? Dude was a DBA."
Coworker: "Hah? No shit? That's cool."
Me: "Yeah. Dude was a master of INSERTS. BOOM. KONNICHIWAAA."
Coworker:
@mietze @surreality I think, in a way, it's all connected. The panic attack that comes from extreme content can be just as bad as an emotional response due to extreme attachment, which can both tie to feelings of self worth, exclusion, ostracism, lack of safety, insecurity.
In the end, communication is great, but in cases where there is something unhealthy in the lack of emotional separation, the equation of self with character, even the most accommodating of players simply aren't equipped for the task. There are people who use these games (knowingly or not) to work through very real emotional issues, and because of this, unwittingly pit other players against these issues in a testing grounds of the sort.
I've seen failed marriages being worked out through RP resulting in nasty jealousy fits when other players are drawn into TS.
I've met quite a few people hiding online through relationship rp while avoiding difficult RL marriages.
I've met people who don't have many friendships, romance, or a feeling of belonging outside of MU, and the games represent the whole of their social circle. Like Second Life, the text version.
As much as we communicate or try to accommodate, there are simply some scenarios in play where the emotional separation will not be possible because the hobby itself, or someone's presence in it, is skating a healthy line, and I think there are plenty of us (people who approach this hobby as a team-based creative hobby) who run into these emotional separation issues and think: "Fuck, I'm sorry, that sucks, but I'm...not a therapist? I wish I could help but I can't and I've got my own RL to put first, and I wish you the best, but please, please, PLEASE don't put the responsibility for that stuff on me.
When people habitually give edited versions of their side of the story knowing full well that they're not innocent, forever leaving them in danger of the other side of the story being released; which would crush them like a bug.
People love to swear that they're the sheep when they're up to some wolf shit.
@surreality said in Emotional separation from fictional content:
The way you are putting this, it is coming across -- to me, at least -- like so: "If you think any combination of circumstances might at any time cause you to lose objectivity, you are not welcome here."
But you, yourself, are not approaching this issue from a position of objectivity. Nobody is.
I don't think that that is an entirely accurate, or fair, assessment. I think plenty of people are being plenty objective on the topic, without resorting to taking it to the personal arena or losing their temper.
So let's turn it down a notch, please?
I think the food allergy analogy actually works pretty well.
When someone with a food allergy goes into a restaurant and sits at the table with an epi-pen, a lot of things happen. They:
I'm sure using this analogy, the person with the food allergy might believe that they're an excited customer taking on all of the risks to try this wonderful food!
However, they're also stepping into a restaurant and directing traffic, seeding all kinds of risk that most people would want to avoid, and whether or not the customer is assuming the risk, they're also assuming that the restaurant is willing to assume the risk of lawsuit if some kind of mistake is made. Now making their meal becomes an actual life or death task, and the other customers in the restaurant get to wait and see whether or not they get some mid-meal death/shock action with their dining experience.
Now, I am sympathetic to people with food allergies, even violent ones, and it must be very hard to work with, but when customers do this in restaurants, it's not that the customer is assuming all of the risk. They're introducing the risk, to themselves and others, and have decided that since they're willing to accept the risks, then the other people present should be willing to accept the risks on their behalf.
Just because guy with peanut allergy wants to assume the risk to eat at my Chinese restaurant doesn't mean that I'm required to be in any way okay with the discomfort that comes with cooking a meal that may inadvertently poison someone and get my business sued.
Mistakes happen, but when peanut allergy guy decides that it's going to be a risky night, the expectation is that you will not make a mistake on their behalf.
Just discovered a new RL peeve to get that "person knows they're in the wrong but trying to ruin someone else for a lesser offense" peeve off my mind until I have to deal with it later today.
Disney+ having all 3 Mighty Ducks movies but when you click on them all you can play are the special features because contractually they are not allowed to stream the movies until JULY 2020 is like...
@Ganymede @ThatGuyThere But even with it being restricted to mortals and if staff monitors to ensure that backgrounds and character types match the PT they've chosen:
(i.e. "My character's a prostitute (empathy and subterfuge), but since those asset skills are useless in day to day rp I'm going to put in her background that she used to be a professional target shooter (crafts and firearms), but have no intention of continuing her lifestyle as a pro shooter past cgen, this is all just background stuff, but I want her to be able to make stuff and shoot guns despite 85% of her time she's blowing dudes.")
Even then, merits are less expensive than skills. So PT is a great way to spend 2xRating XP to make it possible to buy skills at 2xRating instead of 3xRating, then end up with a 'rote' action on a firearms roll?
Still, IMO, cheeseball and OP
Let's take it a step further, too?
A lot of the WoD games in the MuSphere have some fairly ancient characters with a boatload of XP, and the ones that allow PT (such as Fallcoast) honor the xp benefits and free specialties during chargen. So, in theory, you're foolish for not taking PT and sinking a max of 30 xp for the following benefits:
30 xp (PT level 5) gets you:
(note that only 1 dot in the asset skill is required in the PT coming out of chargen, even if you have PT5)
Final tally:
During chargen, for the expenditure of 30xp (which the savings alone comes from the 15xp per asset skill discount), you get the following:
Cost with PT:
Cost without PT:
I'm pretty sure my math is accurate on this, I'm sure someone will tell me if it's wrong, but my point is this: PT is cutting corners to maximize dice output and reduce cost in skills, whereas any given character who doesn't take PT has to pay the costs outright, DESPITE ROLEPLAYING AS A MEMBER OF THIS PROFESSION.
From a roleplaying perspective, there shouldn't be a single trained bartender in existence without the PT(Bartender) merit, since they've trained as a bartender! Then, technically, when spending time working as a bartender, shouldn't they be forced to spend XP to explain the skills they've gained as a bartender? After all, how could they properly RP a bartender with no dots or training in the profession? If they're spending XP on firearms, but have no PT or points in the asset skills of a bartender, then they'd be a shit bartender, right?
Eh. Altogether PT reads to me as a clever way to skirt around xp costs to maximize character dice output, but not from a game/in character perspective, but from the perspective of a player who realizes that buying shit at 2xRating or 3xRating eats up XP fast, and they want the biggest bang for their buck coming out of Cgen.
End soapbox? TL;DR?
Cheeseball, corner-cutting garbage, PT is. IMO
@ZombieGenesis Exactly. You should just go out to the car and wait until everyone else is done and never see a movie ever ever again.
Come on, let's keep this a "passive-aggressive stuff upset moms say when you critique their potato salad" free zone. It's my opinion dont agree? Let's discuss
Constructively, I think, from a certain point of view, it's easy to approach this hobby as figurative sandbox. When I was younger, around 19, so probably around 99/2000, I had this lackadaisical attitude about these games. Don't ask me where I played, I couldnt remember. Fuck, 1030, I'm digressing Back to the point:
I think it's easy to approach these games like its a community sandbox and whether your individual fucked-up-ness leads you to a place where you take a karate kick to all of the castles in the sandbox, even the ones other people are building, it doesn't matter. It's data, words on a screen, time spent, and within x# months/years the game will go away and it'll all be lost, right? If you get frustrated and destroy everyone else's creation in the sandbox, even your own, you're not destroying actual property. You can walk away anonymously. Life will go on.
Now, back then, I might have kicked a few assets when leaving a game, but I never did anything damaging, but my point is this:
Depending on who you ask, the level of value as to what is on these games and how lasting that value is, even if the game is only open 6 months, varies from person to person. It is, however, very likely that these unapologetic repeat offenders view this hobby as sandcastles made of ether and code where people merely donate their time, and that there is no actual, lasting value aside from what your own self seeks to get out of it.
The worst repeat offenders may, on some level, not take the hobby seriously outside of their own involvement, view the stories as important only so long as they're involved, and don't see the point in bothering much about anyone else's involvement or feelings because, in the end, very few of us know each other in a RL sense.
Which would explain why these people become unapologetic about the way they fuck with the sandbox. Because, what's the risk to them for doing so?
I remember when my boss's son died unexpectedly none of us knew how to really approach it. My boss is very "college football, hiking, etc" and has that old school man dude energy to him. Like the kind of guy that wouldn't shed a tear over Good Will Hunting, but Rudy? Hed probably cry.
I remember when he first came down the aisle on his first day back. I didn't know what to say, but it ended up pretty well.
I put my hand out, we had one of those clapping shakes, and I said "Anything. We got you." He nodded. I nodded.
On some sort of "men who dont talk about their feelings" level I kinda hope he thought it was good as I think it seemed to resonate.
I don't think it's a dumb idea at all. Though, I do have a suggestion for you.
You're going to have to make a choice, and while neither is a perfect choice, only one will be right for your game:
PVP or PVE
Are you going to allow the players to faction-up and decide to war against themselves, or are you going to provide the players with a target to rally against?
When going into putting together a theme, pay close mind to the trends of MUers and how they approach PVP/PVE.
PVP allows players to faction as they choose and tends to create pockets of roleplay. Also, due to the risk of players getting upset, factions on a PVP game tend to avoid each other until absolutely necessary. People tend to get upset when one faction becomes popular, and when this happens, they tend to throw their weight around. A good example of successful PVP factioning are the old Star Wars games centered around Empire vs Rebellion.
PVE can have player-led factions, but will require the game-runners to provide the players with information that keeps the setting relevant. If players have nothing to do, they'll usually end up sticking to relationship roleplay and playing house, which will leave you with a semi-decent population of roleplayers, but your proactive, theme-building, DOING SHIT roleplayers might taper off. So, if your focus is going to be PVE, you have to be prepared to do 2 very important things:
So, a setting is great, your setting works just fine, but when it comes to original themes, your main task is finding a way to help others invest in the setting through either available information or immersive RP. Then, make sure you have a game plan as to how the PCs are going to congregate.
PCs are like farm animals. You need to give them drama and tasks to perform or they're just going to end up taking up barn space and fucking a lot.
TMW the boss's boss is hanging out by your cubicles (on a day he intends to send everyone home early) and he's asking why your team lead is late and another guy called out sick.
And you're there because you were wise enough to predict this AND wise enough to go into the office on a day that was gonna be a free half-day.
Word.
I played it this weekend and I loved it.
I miss Cam/Anarch/Sabbat. I miss the oWoD clans, I miss the old setting.
I also LOVE the new blood mechanic.
Short version:
I love this. The amount of blood in a vampire was never a good representation of supernatural hunger, nor did it ever really reinforce playing VtM like an actual creature of the night. Now, this new mechanic reinforces occasional descent into a vampire mindset.
Example: I rolled a 1 on a hunger die and decided to opt into a temporary compulsion, which ended up being a need to feel predatory. So for the scene, my character went to a rooftop to look down over the kine (a la Batman, Spawn, Underworld) until the urge subsided.
So these temp compulsions arent exactly YOU LOSE YOUR SHIT AND EAT A BODY IN A CROWDED FOOD COURT, but more so...the predator in you stirs and for the scene you have a compulsion to stalk prey, whether you eat or kill anything isn't necessary.
I'm liking it so far.
