Best posts made by Ghost

@surreality People with good intentions let you decide your level of involvement and vulnerability. Yeah. Fuck that guy.

Picard.
Holy shit.

I'm excited for this. So glad to see Prime Star Trek back

This article, here (about a guy ejected from a gaming con for running an RPG where the PCs get gang raped) is why promoters of the X-Card feel that it is necessary. Regardless of my personal disagreement with the X-Card, this is highly relevant to the discussion.

On more than one occasion my SO and I have been "surprised" by stuff like this during game night. It resulted in someone being thrown out the door like Jeff on "Fresh Prince of Bel Air".

Also:

A family member and their friends worked for the Yotes during the Gretzky era. Here's the lowdown.

• Cool: Doan, Roenick, Tocchet, and Tyson Nash
• Gretzky is an asshole
• Mike Comrie talked in the 3rd person
• Danny Briere is the bomb

@faraday Yeah, the X-card system isnt really designed to be chopped up in some places. Sure, it says that you can take/leave as much of it as you want, but the basic core tenets that are somewhat static/necessary are:

• You tell the player that if they push the X-card, the group will deviate from that topic, no questions asked.
• Asking the X-Card player to leave the game due to discomfort is contradictory to the spirit of adopting the X-card "mission statement".

@Rinel Uuuuupvote.

Yea, no spoilers, but Stewart seamlessly slipped back into the role (and another old face despite not having the same face channeled an old character perfectly). The first episode SOLIDLY set up the season, Picard definitely takes place in the "Prime" timeline, and this new story is intriguing as hell with the implications about WHO this new girl is.

I suspect this season will showcase a culmination of the best TNG storylines, crossing the Romulans, the Borg, and the crew of the Enterprise.

The first episode is SO GOOD that it feels like it goes by too fast. By the end shot (which, I was going "HOOOOLY SHIT" during and the roll of the credits I had chills. So much to explore. After the episode there is basically a trailer for "what's to come" in the future of this season, and ALL OF IT looked like stuff I wanna see.

@Arkandel said in X-Cards:

@Ghost said in X-Cards:

• Asking the X-Card player to leave the game due to discomfort is contradictory to the spirit of adopting the X-card "mission statement".

That has been the default answer since the 80s. "If you don't like it then don't play here".

It fixes nothing.

I do not believe that to be correct. It fixes the problem of players playing on games with content that they do not enjoy and players being forced to play games they do not wish.

All anyone can do is ask if content can be molded to their wishes, and if the playerbase does not wish to do so, they (the existing players) are not doing anything wrong by declining to do so. That's just the way life works. You simply have to accept that some games are not a good fit for your wishes, and (this is key) if the playerbase does not wish to alter the game to your wishes, then forcing them to so so would still leave you playing with people who did not wish to alter course for your sake to begin with.

• You don't go to a Catholic church and demand sermons on Xenu
• You don't go to AA and demand them not to talk about alcohol
• You don't go to a Magic: The Gathering night and demand everyone plays Yu-Gi-Oh instead

You ask. If they don't want to, then you find groups that will meet your criteria or start one of your own. It's a tried and true method that has existed for hundreds of years; ask Christianity or Satanism.

Billie Eilish wrote a Michael Skarn song. For that she deserves everything ever.

WoD is just altogether bad for X-carding.

• Gentry kidnapping babies.
• Bloodletting
• Tackle and neckbite for food (which some people equate to a sexual assault)
• immortal vampires in the body of minors
• Litany laws demanding wolves breed and a caste of breeding stock characters
• Vaginas Vaginae with fangs
• Smoking
• Trenchoats, katanas, tommyguns
• Dolphin guys with bang lists
• mental illness as a non-voluntary character trait (Malks)
• character death
• Theres always some sect hunting you
• PvP elements
• People hunting vampires because someone <insert xcard>'d their sister
• Every vampire character story starts off with: You died
• The WoD is not meant to be happy. People are assholes. You don't prosper in it; you survive it

D&D is far less edgy. WoD is not a great place to implement the X-card altogether, as some of these entries are jokes, but others are central to theme and/or character design.

@Admiral said in Good TV:

@Ghost There's guides online to skip the filler episodes. Somewhere.

Yeah but I'm making my DBZ friend watch all of Robotech. So since he has to suffer Minmei, I'm going full native and watching all of it. So no DBZ Kai for me.

@Thenomain Yeah I mentioned V5 brought up the X-card as an option a few MSB thread pages back. That whole section of the book has a lot of good material as to how to handle the issue of content with lots of methods.

Their key one, which I really like, is at SESSION ZERO the group discusses their list of no-go points and their preferred coterie list of morals.

Those poor guys got wrecked. They put a lot of good work into how to handle extreme content, that not all aspects of canon needs to be followed, that they don't support RL monsters, and despite all that it's gonna go down in history that they were allegedly a bunch of Swedish alt-right neo Nazis who were apparently so alt-right that they created an all Islam faction, a progressive SJW Gangrel canon character, and a rogue group of women at the helm of a new worldwide Tremere sect who chose to break out of the male dominated "boys club".

There were so many interesting ways to play, some of them with inspiring progressive ideas and yet...

Anyway /rant. Entitlement thread stuff.

But if y'all can get a snippet of the chapter where V5 addresses this it might be some amazing ideas/wording for MU/wiki sites.

@surreality Yanno, every time I see the word Nazi, I hear Brad Pitt.

"GNAT-SEES"

Thanks Quentin Tarantino.

Second thought: Kinda feel like calling them "gnat-sees" takes a little of that power away from them.

"I am a proud member of the Knot-see-"
"Whatever, Gnat-see"
"Uhm, I believe it's pronounced knot-"
"Oh dont you feed me that Samhain is saaaaw-when crap you anti semite 1940s larper."

(ETA: retroactive sidebar notice)

@surreality I think this is a good example of something that cant be hashtagged for content and could come up in game in that "xcard this shit" way. I also think I own 3+ RPG books that have systems for this specific thing (Mutants and Masterminds being one of them) and 20+ games with systems on how to handle suffocation.

Having said that, I think this is absolutely the kind of conversation the V5 team was writing about when they suggested session 0 be a conversation about the group's preferred nogo points so that the GM wont depict it and the players might agree to simply not use it in combat.

@Auspice said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

I just spent 5 minutes trying to spell corduroy. My initial attempts were so bad even spellcheck was like 'bitch i got no idea'.

You dont know how to spell corduroy but you like Conor Oberst.

That's some black belt level "Bad Hipster" shit there. In the years I knew the scrawny douche I don't think I ever saw him wearing anything but.

Not entirely, no, but lemme spit this.

^

These days we're seeing what feels like an increase in social control mechanisms. More defined rules as to who can say what, what can or cannot be said, and who has the right of way when it comes to a disagreement regarding said social rules. Sure, societies have always had these kinds of things, but I'm noticing now more than I ever have that the number of things that I apparently am not allowed to say or have no right to do seems...more in the forefront?

No Social Dice
So, let's look at this. Mushers typically don't want social dice (and telepathy rules) for a few reasons. 1) Because they don't want creepers to use it to justify being allowed to do things that they're not comfortable with and 2) Because they don't want to be told what their character believes, wants, or has to do based on the game system. It creates an uncomfortable series of possibilities that are ultimately based around the player being committed against their will to the whims of an IC or OOC system. The x-card isn't entirely the same as people's aversion to social dice, but I believe it's in the same "spirit family", if you will.

The X-Card
I was giving this some thought this morning while I was drinking my quad-shot dirty chai and listening to the radio in the car. (not an important detail).

I think it's fair to say that the "X-Card", given the social climate, falls into the category of yet another social control mechanism designed by the eye of the beholder to want the guarantee that when they say "stop" everyone "stops". That seems to be the commonality between many of these social control mechanisms: "When I say stop, you stop, regardless of whether or not you agree with me". Because we can't seem to argue religion, race, or politics, but oh how many try to force the other side into being not-allowed to partake.

Let's be fair. The X-card concept seems to accept the fact that you will never be able to entirely guarantee that something "triggering" will never ever ever happen in an RPG, but it's a system designed to both relinquish and provide control of the conversation; yielding the "right of way" to whomever doth presseth the cross. I think with enough meditation on it, that's what it is, isn't it? It's not truly a system that addresses social communication and how to properly behave in a role-playing game (or even work ahead of time to make sure everyone's comfortable), but it's a system designed to provide a modicum of control to the person who feels (for good reason or selfish) the need to assume control of the conversational/creative behaviors of ACTUAL people.

So... (here's my dismount)

...could it be said that for the same reason people are uncomfortable with the use of social dice there could be some correlation to the reasons why they would be comfortable using the X-Card, but aren't paying enough attention to the fact that on some level the X-Card is in the same category of the very thing they hate about social dice? (i.e. No one wants to be controlled, but it's better to hold the reins than to be strapped to the wagon?)

@Derp said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Ghost said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

Bad Hipster

Is this like the spinoff to Bad Moms or Bad Grandpa? Or Bad Teacher?

The pitch:

Zach Galifianakis and John Cena try to be hipster amongst a population of hipsters including: Jason Schwartzman, Zoe Deschanel, Demetri Martin, and Jared Leto.

ETA: And no Conor Oberst in the soundtrack because I want to be able to watch it.

@SG Ugh yeah. I've had GMs do that and it drives me crazy. I get that there are some shows/video games that take the dramatic route that the players get beaten down by a formidable foe and have to come back to beat them, but it can be a major drag for the players to go through this.

How I keep from doing this?

1. If the players get cocky and try to run in and one-shot the big bad, I will absolutely let the big bad hand their asses to them. (If the players push for the fight)

2. I will have the BigBad visibly direct the mini-bosses. It could be scrolls/parchment, radio communications, holographic orders, or even being in the distance pointing his/her finger down at the PCs. I let the BigBad be named/visible as the director of the hurdles the PCs have to overcome, which results in the BigBadBossfight actually feeling more like the last 30 minutes of Final Fantasy 7. That Sephiroth fight, right?

#2 has had good results with my group, and because of #1 they have stopped trying to MurderHobo every evil NPC I put in play.

Sidenote: This is easier with games that don't publish the "Challenge Level" of monsters/bad guys. D&D-type games are notorious for having an idea which monster manual entries they are/are not stronger than. Some even memorize stats/abilities. This is metagaming. Which I helped nip that bad habit by either not listing the power level of my BigBad or by stating ahead of time that I've made modifications to some Monster Manual Monsters.

@Ganymede said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@Testament

I’d be embarrassed as fuck and be looking for another SO.

Keep your chirp down, bitch, it’s not praccy.

Yeah, was thinking the same thing. If that whole thing is in the early stages, total red flag. GM bunnies kill teams. Gotta get that W. Pants down time.

I used to have a problem with min-maxing in my games. Not to pundit, but I think that min-maxing isn't in the spirit of RPGs. Even Conan the Barbarian had other skills than being a badass swordsman.

As a GM I don't look to fuck over my players by specifically designing adventures around their faults. Instead, I just design adventures with a number of different required skills across the board where one skill can't handle everything. You could have a plus 3000 base attack bonus and be skill statted for combat, which will do you well if combat is the viable answer to everything, but when it comes to noticing things or hacking a computer/door, your lack of spread will be your downfall.

I simply "prepare a spread". This means the combat players will get some combat, but may eventually have to defer to PCs with the other skills. This goes the other way, too. Intelligence/Charisma players can't talk themselves out of everything and may need to call their MurderHobo buddy to bail them out.

I used to have a big issue with players who simply avoided putting dots into social skills at all under the assumption that they could RP/convince me as a GM that dice weren't necessary. That cleared up really quick when I reinforced that game mechanics would require them to be more than PLAYERS WHO COULD ROLEPLAY but with the sheet of an emotionless AC43 Robocop MurderMachine. Too bad we weren't rolling the PLAYER'S social/int/skill dice, but the CHARACTER'S.

So it ended in...

...a good place?