Posts made by Ghost

@Ganymede said in Eliminating social stats:

Example: BSG: Unification, where having a particular secondary skill may make it easier to do a task or two, but actions otherwise revolve around a core of action skills relevant to combat.

I think BSG:U is a great example of where it works well, but I wonder if the existence of rank aids it. The military structure and existence of rank may very well eschew(WORDSMITH ALERT) the need for social skills because the theme has a built-in construct for rank, expected IC behaviors, and ramifications if they are sent to extremes.

It's smart. Really smart.

The military doesn't lend super well to social skills since the game is task based, which leaves a lot of the social interaction to either team-based efforts or interpersonal relationships and if those get out of hand...in comes military regulations.

And the decision of who is right or wrong, who wins the social rolls, can come down to a matter of rank and/or who follows it and doesn't.

One more quandary to bring to the table:

If social skills/stats are eliminated from sheets, then games and characters can become sorely imbalanced.

The reason these game systems, from D&D to WoD, ALL include social stats and the need to spend points in them that you'd otherwise spend elsewhere, is to result in a standing example of what that character is or is not good at. It lets the players and GMs know the strengths and weaknesses of a character.

Cut social out:

• I spent all of my points in combat skills, and since I didnt have to buy socials, since I can make convincing arguments, my soldier with zero social experience is every bit as deceptive and clever as Littlefinger from GoT

If both social and knowledge skills are handwaved based on OOC attempt:

• I put ALL of my points into combat skills, so my soldier character is primed for all things combat, but due to my Google-skills and ability to form OOC explanations, he is an adept spy and understands the engineering capability of long range ICBMs because I understand these things...but didn't want to spend the points I wanted to put towards combat for him to know these things.

It becomes a Mary-Sue formula, and removing the need to declare strengths and weaknesses by means of chargen only makes it more of an issue.

@Rook Interesting idea.

I often joke that Social Manipulation skills are often more dice worthy than a shotgun in your inventory, because technically a well placed lie can recruit cops with shotguns to shoot at the bad man with the gun who is chasing you...because you just robbed him.

I hate to see that stuff overused, but it's all risk vs reward and if people don't min-max, they should have some dice to use in defense.

One thing I HATE seeing is min-maxing and ignoring social skills because nobody uses them anyway, unless theyre needed for some kind of Vampire power.

I'm a strong supporter of social stats and social combat

I think physical and mental skills (more physical than mental) get a regular pass because most physical is up to a roll of the dice and stats which can be optimized. Many players like to base the mental knowledge of their character based on their OOC knowledge or ability to Google, but neither really require much panache on the user-end.

In roleplaying or in MU (prose-based roleplaying), the expectation is that your words, actions, and intentions matter when getting your character's personality out there. It is a CORE element of the hobby that needs to be in place, but also, like GooglingKnowledgeSkills, replacing it with a quasi-meta agreement system and diceless pass/fail is a step in the wrong direction.

Really, the core of this topic is winners and losers, and when it comes to social combat, it doesn't matter how convincing the player feels their argument is. THEY are not the character. They are feeding lines to their character and rolling to determine, all dialogue validity aside, how convincingly deceptive, persuasive, or impressive their character translates those lines to their IC audience.

Many of these games are an ever-present source of stalemate due to entire crowds of players avoiding each other due to an inability to concede loss or victory because both sides want to win those situations, and doing away with social stats, dice, and social combat will solidify said 'You win when I say you do' approach as a standard.

It is my opinion that, instead, we work the other direction and start enabling people to have more IC social victories at the cost of leveraging IC risk, and one way we can achieve that is by letting dice aid in that process.

And, of course, never allow dice to justify things that are banned behaviors on the game.

@faraday Sorry for the lack of clarification. Since a lot of these APIs differ (Penn/Tiny/Rhost), I'm mostly looking at Rhost but in terms of how to utilize the API in practical application towards MU.

I'm exploring really, and just looking for any good resources and examples that explain this process altogether.

I'm kind of a N00B at API/API usage/API setup. Any good resources on this out there?

@SunnyJ said in POLL: Super Hero MU Gut Check:

Young X-Men
PLEASE do allow them. Mercury, Rockslide, X-23 are all great characters. I am not hot on OCs either, and I am much more prone to teach as Nightcrawler, Emma or Gambit if it is a FC student. I am not saying BAN OCs, but OCs need to understand they are fighting an uphill battle and not resent other players for it. It would be unfair to hate people for not liking OCs, as it would be unfair to ban OCs altogether.

Anyone that isn't a fan of the Young X-Men crew need to check out Skottie Young and Humberto Ramos' (Written by Kyle/Yost) run of New X-men (#38-46).

It really does reflect on the horrors that come with being a teenaged mutant at a boarding school that is GROUND ZERO in the war for mutant rights, and when Messiah Complex starts, at one point, they're all huddling in by the fire together, scared out of their minds, with a few X-Men left behind to protect them while waiting for Predator X to come and eat them alive.

There's a lot more RP to be had with this crew than teenage romance

@Tempest IIRC the Brotherhood was generally welcome in Utopia so long as they behaved and didnt draw law enforcement.

In X men Canon, Utopia was a recognized 'burb of San Francisco, a city who in their spirit of acceptance, extended their views to mutant rights, as well.

So think mutant town that upgraded to MutantBurg complete with being a recognized part of California. IIRC.

Naturally, that also drew a lot of drama towards the greater bay area.

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

I hate it when academics shade agency by blaming the herd

Agreed.

It's a logical fallacy to suggest that it is wrong for herds to be judged with having presumed traits simply for being a part of that herd, but then acceptable to judge another herd with having presumed traits simply for applying to the demographics of that herd.

If it's wrong, it's wrong.

@Auspice Does this qualify as wineing?

@Auspice ...I'd hit it

@surreality Oh man, my Catholic upbringing and that music...all that sad, guilt-ridden, I'M SORRY OKAY PLEASE DON'T SMITE ME music.

I think Eddie Izzard set it best that the Catholic church doesnt make a hallelujah sound like an actual hallelujah.

@Aria You can fuck all the white people you want.

I only like girls who are black...

...metal

@Auspice it's GONE.

Can you paste it? Do u still have it in buffer?

@Aria If white people giving acoustic black metal concerts in school classrooms is wrong...

...then I dont wanna be right.

Not to digress from my earlier points, but my guy (I unfriended now) is the dude with this basic outlook:

"White people come from a position of privilege in our society, and black people have no voice, so it's my responsibility to advocate for and speak on behalf of black people for their lack of voice. We should love one another...which mostly involves shaming you."

Wait. Confused. Did you just say your privilege is a bad thing or good thing?

@surreality Well, he's too egotistical to understand that when his grandmother says she enjoys him reading to her, she probably means: "You could read a cookbook to me for all I care. What is important is the amount of time we spend together."

But the last time I saw him he was going on and on about how she's from a generation of rampant racism and how proud he is that she sees the importance of these facts and that she says she loves him reading the books to her.

Fuck, man, read her Anne of Green Gables and make her final year about time well spent, not educating her about shit she won't need next year.

@Auspice I got two so far:

1. U R the Bestest (and allegedly not from my SO)

2. BlahBlahBlah you need to trust your friends so that the person who wrote this can feel like he secured a convert BlahBlahImAnEgotisticalWindbag

So, hey, I'm batting 50/50 and have no death threats or admissions of desire yet.

And no...I would sooner liquefy one of my testicles with a tenderizing hammer before posting the link to my Sarahah on here.

@Misadventure not likely to happen.

His grandmother, who he lives with, is very elderly and dying of dementia.

He once told us that he reads to her at her bedside every night...

...nonfiction books about the statistics of white privilege and it's affects on society.

@Paris Good advice. We had to cut them off during a period of severe high functioning autism issues with our kid and this guy and his friends were like: OMG UR shutting us out because you wont listen to us talk about systemic racism and how to take the Universal Unitarian approach on love, WTF!

No. We had to shut you out because you were repeatedly engaging an autistic 8 year old on an authoritarian level despite us asking you to stop.

Yeah, I'm gonna unfriend. If after 14 years all he's got is your ego is keeping you from joining my church atmosphere, then he is no longer a friend.