Posts made by Ghost

"*Why you gotta DIS?"

Normal until the difficulty makes it a cakewalk, then I step it up.

For story-based games, it's the story I want. For challenge/grind type games, like Diablo 3, I'm currently running on my seasonal bit on Torment 4

You could zip them up and then upload them to Google drive

Hubris

And the other other other Isis

TETRIS

Crisis

mothafuckin MOLASSES

Once, in D&D, we were trying to sneak past a sleeping, blue dragon. We were too weak to fight it, but the only way was through its cave, so we opted to try to sneak (turning back around would have taken days off of our travel).

Half of the group was past the point of no return when the thief in the group decided to sneak attack the dragon in the EYEBALL. We were successfully sneaking past it before Douche Baggins decided to try to SOLO the fucking dragon.

It woke up and threw electricity everywhere.

80% party death. Right there.

@Finn

uhhhhhh...hehuh
Uhm.
Uhhhhhhhhh heh

....Beavis.

MAVIS

DOUBLE POST

One of my favorite ways an RPG system approached stuff like this was in Eclipse Phase. In the setting Earth is a destroyed nightmare wasteland, which requires all of society to live in space on stations, habitats, etc. It's a trans-humanistic setting.

In the flavor text around culture and how it's approached, they mention that since money isn't needed anymore; that old, obsolete Earth concepts had become a sort of fashion.

• A gypsy-esque coin bra made out of nickels and dimes
• A lucky chain keepsake of a tearing from a $5 bill trapped in a clear, plastic case
• Old AMERICAN EXPRESS and DISCOVER cards hanging from a mobile in a cramped habitat dorm room

@Apu @Thenomain Or, in my preferred way of thinking, that kind of like how some people nowadays are really into Greek Mythology (or at least enjoy a good toga party) that somehow, despite the passage of time, someone thought the Hello Kitty (perhaps an image in an archive, a museum, or an old photograph of teenaged girls from Earth that was) was fucking cute as hell and had it printed it on a tee shirt.

Digging up old culture references from the past is way more explainable that drudging up pop culture references that haven't happened yet.

For the record, I thought Kitty's Hello Kitty shirt was badass, even while she was tasing my character and two others in an ill-advised, completely accidental shower brawl incident.

"HAT TRICK"

@Apu said in Course Corrections:

Kitty, my engineer gal on Serenity, had a (very) vintage Hello Kitty shirt

Alas, Firefly canon actually includes Earth That Was. It's in canon that the greater Firefly universe is a direct, forward-in-time descendant from our time.

Battlestar Galactica goes the other direction. BSG predates historic Greece.

And Legos, Sweden, Zorbing, etc.

@Miss-Demeanor and I was extrapolating.

Edit/Afterthought: you jackass

@Finn

Scarif

@Miss-Demeanor The existence of how-to guides on the internet does not, by existence, justify the handwaving a roll needed to translate that information into a success. Time to complete the task (a recipe you know by heart is always prepared faster than if you need to keep reading directions), absorption of information, and the ability to translate those instructions accurately are all factors that should not be decided merely by the existence of online how-to guides.

In short, just because there's shit about it on YouTube, doesn't mean it counts as "ghost dots" on a character sheet, thus enabling people to min max their XP in other ways.

Let me give you an example
In RL, I write shell scripts. If you look up sh/bash/ksh scripting in Google, you're bound to find hundreds, if not thousands, of sites that include methodologies, discussions, tips, bad advice, scripting examples, and in some cases, entire guides on how to write scripts. Now, going in, my computer score is in the 3-4 range, and when I go to these sites, it's usually to find an answer as to why some syntax in one string isn't working like I think it should.

I'll take a snippet, test it, see if I like it. I apply it to my current skill and attribute levels to translate it into an action based on what I currently know.

Now, let's say you've never played around with shell scripting EVER

The existence of online guides doesn't guarantee you any form of timely success in understanding functions, variables, syntax, which text editors to use, regular expression, how to do math using code, if/then/elif/fi, for each in, conditionals, loops, etc. Applying those guides to your current level of knowledge will be good experience in raising your skill/attribute levels, but the existence of guides will not result in a solution in a timely, accurate, or immediately useful manner. In the end, even if you plugged together a script after hours of learning shell scripting for the first time, you might come away with a script that echoes commands, but it's sure as fuck not going to be some kind of java-based LowOrbitIonCannon DDoS tool.

Theres guides for making a boat, making knives, guns, bullets, sewing, cooking, fishing, Krav Maga, etc on the internet, but the existence of those only serve to allow practice to (in game terms) raise those skill/attribute ratings to use them effectively.

Some online guides are more within reason, but a GM should take care to not equate a player's ability to think to search for find these guides as a replacement for proper use of skills, especially if the result is critical to anything involving plot or other players.

tl;dr Online guides don't​ teach skill, accuracy, or guarantee absorption of the knowledge. Using 'online guides' ICly for little, non-plot things (bake a cake!) is more acceptable, but cutting corners by citing online guides to handwave dice rolls (by the PC or ST) is lazy and, in my definition, cheating the shortcomings of their XP expenditures. Not everyone can do everything, and online guides are no great equalizer. Online Guides=+1 bonus to existing skill/attr roll, and NOT an excuse to not roll.

• PC fell off of a building and crashed through the roof of a limo. Survived. (Fortitude. WoD). Minutes later someone shot down a helicopter with an RPG. Helicopter crashes onto limo onto my char. Character dies.
• My player and one other make new characters. Other player is a Malkavian Anti Merc with low humanity and tons of weapons. Mine? Brujah Anti. Scene starts with both waking up on a private jet, mid-flight. I describe my character as Hispanic, from Mexico. Other player starts laughing and shows ST his sheet: INTOLERANCE: MEXICANS. Fight starts. Plane crashes.
• My SO had a Call of Cthulhu PC who sealed a portal to Ithaqua by taking the creepy book used for summoning Ithaqua, ran through the portal, then the portal closed behind her. I play for her character to be a villain in a future game.
• A Tzmisce went blood form and hid inside of my torpored Malkavian with a gaping chest wound. Someone tried to get the Tzimisce out...with a homemade flamethrower

@Misadventure Right. I mean, discovery is important to the mental/high intelligence character. I don't think there's anything wrong with discovery and creation of gadgets, etc, within the confines of the setting.

Where I draw the line:

• Recreating actual scientific discoveries. (Literally repeating Tesla's actual inventions and methodologies). No. You cannot Wikipedia the Edison/Tesla war to invent AC/DC technology or wireless radio. I'm okay with your love of Tesla giving you inspiration, but your character's ingenuity must be of their own design.
• Upgrading the technology level from stone age to extrasolar in weeks. While 5 hours a gaming session is reasonable, these things take time, effort, investment, and may require periods of simply NOT adventuring due to lab hours
• IC development cannot upset the logical power level of a game. I won't allow a game to turn into CYBORGS vs. LAST OF THE MOHICANS. Industrial espionage is a thing and, as a GM, I will use it if I get the sense the foray into discovery/science is being used to create an unbeatable advantage against the PvE aspect of the game.

@Finn

Tardis.