Posts made by Ghost

@Ganymede Everyone loves the quarterback who will throw them the ball. Everyone dislikes the quarterback who keeps it for themselves.

Oh, I know!

Lemme drop a few names from people in my neighborhood who had RPGs come out in 2018, on or around, who deserve some notice.

Tiny D6 (Gallant Knight Games) WEBSITE are some great guys and are making games fast. They've got rules-minimal, RP-high systems and have put out books in post-apocalyptic, fantasy, sci-fi, amd in 2018 their pseudo Baywatch title (BEACH PATROL) got funded. Theyre on DriveThru.

Happiest Apocalypse on Earth made it to DriveThru in 2018. You can find it here

I'm also kind of surprised that Legend of the Five Rings isn't getting more attention, too. The newest edition came out in 2018 as well. John Wick is a great guy (not to be confused with Keanu and guns).

@ZombieGenesis That just...stinks. Sorry to hear that. Not to take this too much towards the political, but people have been harassed for less (namely Kellie Tran from Star Wars). My favorite "leaving Twitter" response was from Will Poulter after Black Mirror Bandersnatch.

Regardless, that article in the OP puts my feelings about V5 pretty well at the end: it's the best version of Vampire yet.

@Arkandel said in Best (PnP) RPGs of 2018?:

A villain is defined by performing villainous acts. If they happen to not be to your liking then don't buy the product, but this trend of actively campaigning against products - or writers - because of the material itself gives me the creeps. It's no less than organized attempts at censorship.

Yeah, I get the creeps out of some of the growing social trends going on, most of them seem to be centered around the U.S.

It is shockingly easy right now to destroy someone's career with an accusation without evidence, diametrically opposed opposition are lobbying for censorship of content they don't like and want unchecked censorship for content that meets their approval, and the growing norm is to try to use social lynch mobs to force businesses to do things they want under duress.

It's really unnerving to me. A guy I know said that everyone involved with V5 should be (actual quote) skinned alive or at the very least chased out of the industry and blacklisted.

We really have passed the point of burning actual heretics to creating new definitions of heretic, because people are unwilling to admit that maybe it isn't the heretic that they hate, but the feeling of doing the punishing that drives them.

This hobby is notorious for having opinionated people spread opinions without actually addressing it with the person they have the opinion with. Little gaggles of people talk amongst themselves and/or anyone who will listen in private discord chats that they hope aren't logged or forwarded to the person that's being talked about.

Ask the person if they can schedule a scene with you. If they are unwilling to or ditch said plans regularly to RP with others, chances are your character isn't where they're wanting to focus their energies or there's something else going on. Use the three strikes rule.

You're not entirely off. There are a lot of people in the hobby who harbor long-term opinions on players, but if you can't jar an actual scene out of someone, then you don't really need to pry it out of them; people role play with people they want to RP with. Period.

All you can really do is be nice to people and check your own behavior to ensure that you're not behaving in a way that you wouldn't want others to treat you. Understand that there are people who simply aren't upfront about not wanting to RP, any existing opinions, or are perhaps zeroed in on some other existing arc of RP that they don't want to overbook themselves.

@Killer-Klown Agreed 100%. To put it bluntly, for a game that previously had a book with a vagina with teeth on the cover, saying that some Brujah might be alt-right or that radical Islamic vampires were involved in Chechnya IMO isn't shocking.

@Thenomain Man, this article is NPR as Hell (in that NPR lists HOT NEW MUSIC and always has these artists I've never heard of before in my life). I haven't seen or heard of most of these games, let alone the top 3.

Man, the Vampire 5th thing sucks. Production-wise it's one of the most amazing games I've seen in a long time. Does it deserve the enmity it received? Handwobble. Only 2 pieces of content in the book; perhaps only 2 PARAGRAPHS weren't popular with the SJW crowd (who were dragged into poring through the books because White Wolf hired Zak S. for a video game). With the going standard being keep the parts you like and make house rules for the rest, I don't think it truly deserved the treatment that it got and don't think the issues were as insurmountable and unacceptable as the critics made them out to be. WW tried to clarify and make right, but the attitude of the people who got angry about that stuff was that they were inconsolable and nothing short of every writer being sacked would be acceptable. In the end I don't think it was a failed launch; I think it was assassination.

So, clearly, I put V5 as #1 for 2018 in my book.

I think the fact that it's DnD5 is actually pretty important; there are a lot of rules that pertain to battle-map setup: movement squares, cone-shaped effects, abilities that require teammates or enemies to be within x squares of each other.

Roll20 has a lot of resources, and you may find some of those DnD5 resources are already available on Roll20. With a little setup time you could get all of your ducks in a row. Otherwise, you could simply USE Roll20's interface to cover the battle map pieces and then keep character sheets outside of Roll20 on Google Docs or something.

A lot of people use Roll20 for the game mat and I suggest Discord for chat/game coordination since you can setup sub-channels, share files, etc very easily. The key, though, will be the map. There are a few other services that create a battle mat environment (D20Pro, Fantasy Grounds) that might be worth looking into, too:

tl;dr: You need a battle mat whiteboard service. Roll20|D20Pro|Fantasy Grounds. Use Discord for everything else.

@Ominous Might want to look into Twilight 2000. I don't know with 100% certainty what, if any, resource management systems are in there. It's been a long time. Be forewarned the game is old school, crunchy, and sometimes reads like a military field guide.

But I do know that the game primarily deals with being a part of a military unit cut off from the main supply chain during WW3 (yes, three). So I remember there being stuff like making stills to produce alcohol that works in engines, medicine including antibiotics, and things like "hunting/foraging to avoid starvation because WW3 makes it hard to find a useful Taco Bell".

If anything there might be some ideas/tables/systems in there that might help you. At the least? Character generation in that game is amazeballs. You basically gen a character through high school lifepathing (family, childhood, high school) and then pick a path (military, college, civilian work, law enforcement). Each round adds something like 4 years to your age and you roll at the end of each round to determine if WAR BREAKS OUT...which ends cgen.

So you could end up with a 22 year old college hacker, a 30-something marine force recon who was in ROTC in high school, or even a 50+ year old doctor who had a family practice in Warsaw...and then Red Dawn Game Happens. Younger characters tend to have better physical stats and less skills. Older characters the opposite. Makes for interesting cgen for sure.

Is Division 2 (DC) carrying over characters from D1, or is it its own separate incident?

@Rucket Not the beta but I'm going to preorder.

Having 5 "number one priority items" defeats the purpose of a "number one priority item".

I wish my job understood this.

I guarantee someone sends Clive Swift's funeral a bouquet and there's at least one uncomfortable chuckle that might aid in the healing.

@sunny Hey, and what works for you works for you. I'm not saying you're wrong to feel the way that you do, but I do disagree that minor incidents aren't escalated into unforgivable drama. There's been plenty of that on MSB.

@sunny I honestly think we're on the same side on this one; I just didn't clarify actual fucked up OOC behavior

What I meant was is basically this:

Fucked up OOC behavior crosses a line. Harassment, attacking someone's RL (physically or through the web), Unwanted repeatable sexual advances, not taking no for an answer, blackmail, attacking one's reputation for personal gain, hacking a code system, siphoning contact information, stalking, abusive language such as threats or directed language intended to cause emotional harm...these are all very fucked up and clearly are in the realm of red card. If the targeted recipient of these chooses to never forgive or associate with that person again? Totally understandable. Totally reasonable. In fact, I think the people that do this stuff are a constant danger to anyone in any semi-anonymous hobby.

However, I think sometimes the offense is something not far from something that could be argued like a sports call: "He was IN!" "He was OUT!" This is stuff like: Differences in rules opinions, differences in what someone intended versus what someone meant to convey, various personal disagreements, headbutting personalities, accidental trigger-trippings, etc. I've seen and been party to miscommunications construed as something nefarious, resulting in people refusing to communicate over theories about why the miscommunications happened to begin with.

So... I think there's fucked up behavior and there's also this very gray realm of drama that goes on in this community where some people simply don't care, others try to work things out, some people agree to disagree and play nice, and then some others take things like disagreement and disappointment as an attack that cannot be forgiven.

Not everyone is fair, so the best you can do when it comes to forgiveness, try to be subjective, and (if the ball might have been on the line) try to suss it out.

My own personal approach that worked for me may not be the same as what works for others. I learned long ago that OOC can cause more problems than IC and to be very careful who I communicated with on an OOC level. For me? Reporting fucked up behavior, keeping pages and personal information to people I knew to trust, and stepping away from situations that bothered me on an OOC level worked for me. For me? It's online ether. Unless any of you were breaking the law or fucking with my RL there wasn't a damn thing happening in game that I couldn't walk away from to find enjoyment in Destiny 2 or hanging with friends.

But that is just me, not everyone, so I think the more people try to genuinely separate intentionally fucked up from disagreement, the better off your community will be.

@sunny

Women (or anyone) should be able to enjoy themselves without being the unwitting recipient of unrequested sexual pestering and/or guilting, shaming, etc.

Trust me. I know. I've been the recipient of OOC-level forcefulness in regards to OOC communication and threats when it comes to TS, IC relationships, etc. It happened a lot less when I was playing male characters, but I've also been the target of some of the usual suspects when it comes to harassment/unwanted page advances when I was playing a female character and the person didn't know my gender Oocly.

I'm quite aware of what some of you people have had to go through. When that happened to me it was very eye opening and gave me a lot more perspective as to what some people, predominantly women, have had to put up with.

When you're a male playing a female character, and are asking yourself "maybe I need to avoid being alone IC with this person because he doesn't take no for an answer", then it becomes more clear.

@sunny Absolutely. Unwanted sexual advances and harassment is a pretty decent grounds for not forgiving and wanting to distance yourself from someone. You're absolutely right. That is abusive OOC behavior and I'd steer clear of that, too.

That particular instance, no, isn't coffee and bro-chat fixed. That's fucked up.

@ganymede Agreed. I think that reputation keeps people involved in games, RP, etc. Everyone likes being liked and it feels good to be wanted.

However, when certain people of certain mindsets get angry over differences in expectations, rules, or direction, it's usually the reputation that gets attacked for that very reason. Salt the fields. A lot of time is spent on MSB trying to determine whether or not a complaint is valid or if it's just vindictiveness because it happens so much and no one wants it to happen to them.

So, I think on an adult level it's responsible for mushers to really get an idea as to what they're willing to allow others to hurt them on through these games. Set a level of expectation of personal emotional investment, don't go over that line, etc.

Now, if someone stalked me, doxxed me, SWATted me? That's fucked up. No forgiveness. Someone once sent a LinkedIn request to their entire playerbase and that incident taught me to use separate email addresses for RL/Mu. A difference of opinion, though? Disagreements and miscommunication are daily life on the internet, and a lot of it in MU is based on OOC interaction.

Forgiveness is what it is, but I think a number of these "never forgive" instances, unless they involve actual fucked up OOC behavior, is often tied to something that isn't truly unforgivable with a cup of coffee and a heart to heart.

I think you'll find that mushers who aren't so concerned about the social currency side-game of mushing aren't easily "hurt" by disagreements/miscommunication, and usually approach the concept of forgiveness/conflict resolution like normal human beings.

Staff doesn't care about their players at all (translation: I am upset about staff not agreeing with me on an issue and am plying the social currency side-game on MSB to achieve vindication).

There is only so much actual fucked up stalking/abuse/maybe even legal damage that happens on these games. The rest is all subjective, and for some, amplified to questionably rational degrees.

@surreality

You're good people. Good on you for apologizing for where you felt you went wrong.

There are people out there that are aware that some people want to avoid drama, and will use that as a means to control the playing field gossip-wise. Good on you for acknowledging that you got played, but the bigger sin's on the person who did the playing. Don't lose sight of that.

I have personal experiences to add to this conversation, but will abstain from detail and simply say that the behavior mentioned in this thread is real and has been happening for years.

Be good to each other. All y'all.