Posts made by HelloRaptor

Some of my favorite RP as a Purified was interacting with Werewolves, which was... pretty surprising really since I expected most of them to be total fucking assholes about it.

Most of them turned out to be pretty cool about it, even the ones who were ICly suspicious. It more or less came down to the fact that I wasn't Possessing anyone's body but my own, didn't treat them with any particular aggression, and eventually because I was a) useful to have around while b) not showing any signs of going into a spiral of unbalanced crazy like most spirits with too much exposure to the material world, they involved me in things from time to time. Even ones outside the pack whose territory I lived in were willing to give me a shot, albeit a wildly suspicious one.

Which is all generally a lot more fun than 'lol they should totes hate werewolves'.

Conflict between factions within the same larger organization isn't a substitute for conflict with other organizations.

Except that's essentially the problem. Recognizable bad guys are a good thing to have, they're a shared foil for disparate groups who are all supposed to be part of the same examination. Sure you're X and this other guy is Y, and Y is totally fucking trash who are total losers, but at least they're not Z. You can both agree that Z is goddamn terrible and on some level you're going to have to temper your rivalry with an awareness of the threat Z presents.

I don't really agree with being able to play Z, whatever it is, because insert every argument about PC antagonist factions, but what all of owod shared was that they all had Z. And it wasn't generally some half-assed phantom threat which very rarely materialized in any concrete fashion (Seers of the Throne) or was so nebulous it might as well be meaningless (like whoever the fuck the pseudo-antagonists in Vampire are now). Werewolf comes close with The Pure, but even that is really pretty lackluster since they're basically just angry assholes and bullies.

Honestly, bullies sums up most of the nwod 'antagonists'. Just petty assholes who like to kick sand in your face because fuck you they can if they want.

As @Admiral mentioned, you can come up with antagonists for any given group if you want, but it lacks setting integration and the weight of meaning. It's the same with D&D, you can spin a story for your players about a race of <whatever custom shit you cooked up> who live in terrible places and bring terrible things with them when they encroach upon the world, but it's never going to have quite the same impact as Mind Flayers, Drow, etc, because those things have weight that's been baked into most of the settings in a way your custom shit just isn't.

@Ganymede can call it a lack of creativity all she wants, but that's like saying that people who prefer RPGs with rules to freeform shared storytelling exercises lack imagination, a vast oversimplification at best and just trolling nonsense at worst.

I found the camera angles so terrible in Dirge of Cerberus I didn't play it past the opening.

@Admiral said:

@HelloRaptor said:

oWoD Werewolf was about a dying breed of spiritual warriors fighting a cosmic evil in a hopeless series of battles trying to stave off the end of everything.

So the werewolves were just Eldar the whole time?

That actually makes me appreciate them a bit more.

...hah. I hadn't thought of that. Nice catch.

@ThatOneDude,

At least in reading Vampire and some of the changes it reminded me of oWoD in some of the powers and the FEEL of it. I think they are making a good move forward.

It's not really about the powers, but as for the feel... oWoD vampire was more or less about being a fish feeding on other smaller fish while avoiding being eaten by the much larger fish who swim upstream from you, who were themselves in turn terrified of even larger fish. I've never really gotten that sense from nVampire at all.

The Camarilla and Sabbat provided organization and a standard framework for creatures who actively lied for centuries or more, not this Choose Your Own Adventure bullshit where nobody outside of your borders gives a fuck or even recognizes whatever is within them. The Elders presented a clear and present danger, especially because there was always someone older and more powerful than you, because of the way Generation worked. I still thought it was a pretty shit game, but at least I could see what it was about, more or less. nVampire seems about as pointless as it's possible to make a game and still call it a game, really. If that's changing in 2.0, hallelujah.

@tragedyjones,
oWoD Werewolf was about a dying breed of spiritual warriors fighting a cosmic evil in a hopeless series of battles trying to stave off the end of everything. Sure, a bunch of ecowarrior stuff was thrown in, but there was at least still an overarching point to it all. It got replaced by nWerewolf where as far as I can tell you basically play a bunch of burnt out spirit cops, who if they were a character on a show would be the stubborn sheriff who's always half drunk and can't be bothered to care anymore, because it's all just a bland miasma of Same Shit Different Day with maybe some procedural stuff thrown in.

nWerewolf is like a slice of life anime. No real point, just following some dudes in their day to day lives, except they're also werewolves, but who cares? Meh.

oWerewolf was incredibly stupid, but also encouraged a balls to the wall action hero plus D&D sort of fun that I could get behind. It was Armies of Darkness over nWerewolf's Law & Order: Spirit Cops.

and reliance on Kickstarter campaigns based on their much older lines

They'll continue to do this because owod in tabletop is still going pretty strong, especially with the 20th Anniversary Editions they've been coming out with. One of the devs came so, so close to admitting they get more interest in their owod lines than nwod ones, but they can't really go backwards because REASONS.

It's a shame, I'll note for the millionth time, because owod mage > nwod mage in virtually every way except streamlined mechanics.

For example they're specifically not balancing spheres (something which MU* traditionally care a lot about), crossover rules exist but they are fairly sporadic and summarized in a single page, etc.

That would require them to care about balance between spheres at all, which White Wolf was very clear about for many years, THEY DO NOT CARE. Vampires do not have to be as powerful as werewolves, or vice versa. Not in the sense that it's not something they think about, but that it's not something they feel is necessary to begin with. As you say, or alluded to, it's a concern manufactured almost entirely by MU* environments with large spheres where people get their panties in a bunch if they feel like other people have more stuff than them.

There was an owod dev who wrote about how he ran a tabletop group with folks playing stuff from the major splats, even a Wraith, and they had a lot of fun and did fine. More or less for the same reason that D&D groups can run with a Cleric, a Druid, and a Fighter in the same party and manage for the person playing the Fighter to still have fun despite being wildly outclassed in every way. And since that's the norm they feel should be encouraged, that a lack of balance between characters doesn't mean a lack of balance between players, approaching game design otherwise just isn't necessary.

Mind, I'd personally be a lot happier if everybody else was more or less brought up to the Mage level of things in some fashion, but only so I could stop reading about people whining about whatever real or (more often) imagined offense they've suffered recently.

Seifer was a whiny man-child who never did anything even remotely cool except star in a game with really good FMVs. He wasn't even the villain, just a big kid throwing an extended temper tantrum, and without the actual intent or volition to actually BE a villain.

Also Zidane was awesome, so boo to you. Cloud was basically a cypher, left blank for the player to project onto, so meh on him. Yuffie was my favorite FF7 character, followed closely by Cid.

Criticize the game where it counts. Calling it "not feeling like a Final Fantasy" just sounds stupidly flimsy to me, like the way people feel about not vaccinating their kids.

Sure, by that logic Spirits Within was just fine for a Final Fantasy movie, even if it was bad. Except it wasn't, and is pretty much universally reviled not just for being not such a great movie, but for having the Final Fantasy logo tacked onto it despite not feeling at all like a Final Fantasy story.

You can call it flimsy all you like, but that's my biggest beef with 8, and why it's my least favorite FF title. Well, that and the Laguna flashback bullshit. >_<

@Ganymede said:

@HelloRaptor said:

Yeah, in FF8 you didn't have any magic of your own, no spells. You extracted them from monsters mid-fight, and could run out of them.

Or you could extract them from items. This really didn't bother me much; I felt it no different than having to create armor or potions, or stealing items during combat (as in FF6). Plus, I had a map.

If someone could explain the difference between extracting magic and harvesting resources in DA:I or the ME series, I'd be happy to listen. Otherwise, it's just an alternate system that folks didn't like -- which is fine.

Sure, it was an alternate system that folks didn't like. That's not even a terribly new idea in Final Fantasy, since 'extracting magic from magical beings' is in... well, most of them at one time or another. But the implementation and presentation of it in FF8 just felt off.

Beyond that, it's just about feel. It didn't feel like a Final Fantasy game, it felt like it should have been a third Chrono game. That's not even a literal reference to the time elements involved, just the way things were put together.

Though nowt hat I think of it, fuuuuuuuuuucking gooooddaaaaamnit. I was almost ready to say I'd go back and play through it again to see if I was just hyping the bad parts up in my memory, but I'd completely forgotten about the entire Laguna flashback stuff, and fuck that. That was so jarring. Don't give me characters to play with, build up, and get attached to and then just be like "Oh hey, sorry, those guys are on hold while you play with these other assholes you have no investment in, and you can't proceed unless you do."

Fuck that game.

Yeah, in FF8 you didn't have any magic of your own, no spells. You extracted them from monsters mid-fight, and could run out of them. Not your mana, but spells themselves. It was a pretty terribad system all around, or at last my experience with it was. Final Fantasy has often involved a lot of repetitive farming, but if you wanted to play to the higher levels the game potentially offered, hunting the rare monsters and stuff, there was a truly mind numbing level of start-fight-draw-mgagic-till-you-can't-anymore, run away, start fight, rinse repeat.

If you haven't, and like action games (or can put up with them for Disney+Final Fantasy), play the Kingdom Hearts series. There's a couple of places where you get to fight Squall and just beat the shit out of him.

It's super cathartic.

<emohairflip> ...whatever. </emohairflip>

@Ganymede said:

@HelloRaptor said:

Not that it was a terrible game, but it's the least-Final Fantasy game of the entire line.

I don't know what the hell you mean by the emphasized text. Even so, that doesn't really make it a bad game. It's not like that FPS game they made.

FF8 is basically just an employment simulator wrapped around the disjointed story of possibly (probably) the worst protagonist of any RPG, ever.

Game: Congratulations, you've gained enough experience as an employee to gain a rank, here's your new paycheck. How do you feel about that, Squall?

Squall: ...whatever.

Game: Same as always, then.

Aside from that Yoshinori Kitase, the director and writer for a chunk of the game, admitted that he'd originally been thinking a lot about a new Chrono game while working on FF8. He didn't get his name in the credits for Chrono Cross, but was the lead for Chrono Trigger in '95, so it's possible they'd been picking his brain a lot about it since other team members from Cross. Regardless, even he viewed the discontinuity of story tone in FF8 as a real possibility.

I can criticize a lot of specifics about 8, but a lot of it would be nitpicking, and the only real way I can say it is how I more or less already did: It didn't feel like a Final Fantasy game.

Maybe the Spirits Within comparison was a bit harsh.

@Arkandel

I literally don't consider that a PrP.

Yeah, sorry, I got a little off point there. The sentiments being expressed are ones that get expressed any time someone organizes a large social event, whether or not they tag it as a PRP or get any sort of PRP credit for it. I'm not really a fan of them myself, either way.

I am not so quietly gnashing my teeth over all the FF8 love. Not that it was a terrible game, but it's the least-Final Fantasy game of the entire line. I don't really agree that it broke the mold so much as was just never poured into the mold in the first place. It feels about as much like a Final Fantasy game as the Spirits Within movie, which is to say it just had the label slapped onto it.

That said, I don't think I would have batted an eyelash or had any problem with it if it had been titled under a different name. Maybe Chrono Something Or Other.

FFIV and FFVI are def the best of the early games in terms of their stories. FFVII is a classic, but the giant polygons can be kind of immersion breaking for folks used to newer games. IX is probably the best of the modern (post-7) games, though unlike some I really liked FFX. IX definately has one of the best protagonists, in that he's a cheerful dude and not some emo asshole.

FFXII is easily my favorite , and I hope it gets a PC port, though I'm not holding out hope. FFXIII is kind of an abomination for many of the same reasons 8 is, but adds 95% of the game taking place in linear corridors as a truly terrible offense. FFXIII-2 more than makes up for this and is a pretty fantastic Final Fantasy game, but nobody really gives it a chance since it's a direct continuation of FFXIII.

I realize not all of these are on PC, I'm just rambling about Final Fantasy.

Also, caveat: If Kingdom Hearts ever gets PC ports, I will squee for life. >_<

@Pyrephox said:

@Coin Mostly I was being snarky about my phrasing. Ideally, yeah, the players or players and staff would work it out so that an event would be fun for everyone - personally, I suspect the average festival or social gathering scene could only be improved by adding gunfire and violence. Or at least some intrigue. (Seriously, every large social scene should have sub-goals for people attending - exchange packages or information, cause social strife between specific people, repair relationships, lure someone to an isolated corner and shiv them, SOMETHING.)

While I would agree, I also generally feel almost anything can be improved by adding X THING THAT I LIKE. For instance I long considered Dances with Wolves to be one of the most boring wastes of time I ever spent money on, and told my friend that I'd only ever watch it again if they added aliens or something. Years later Avatar came out, and I loved it.

Some people just like more or less pointless social gatherings that are just an excuse to get a bunch of people in a room together, explicitly without any larger goal or inclusion of sub-plots. This doesn't really address @Arkandel's sniper scenario, I'm just commented on the bit I quoted. Different strokes and all that.

@Bennie

And yet they gave them a book with stats.

@Miss-Demeanor
I know, and its sad. So sad.

@The-Tree-of-Woe
I found them overly simplistic for beings that are supposed to be alien and unknowable. Then again, I was running smack into inflexible players at the same time.

Is that for use anywhere? I was under the impression that Keepers didn't have normal stats when in their Arcadian realms, but only when they left them for the Hedge (constrained but still vastly powerful) and in the 'real' world where they were bound to more concrete rules and diminished heavily. It always seemed like that was why they were loathe to leave their realms, because while there they have Contracts and control over everything around them, in the real world they were limited in a manner that might actually make them killable.

Is this not the case?

Lots of people go straight to heavy metal for songs to rage to, but for Forsaken’s focus on the pack and the infectious nature of Kuruth, N.W.A.’s Straight Outta Compton is far more representative.

....ahahaahaha what I don't even...

I would have gone with Party Up for Kuruth, if he really wanted to go with rap.

Y'all gon' make me lose my mind
Up in here, up in here
Y'all gon' make me go all out
Up in here, up in here
Y'all gon' make me act a FOOL
Up in HERE, up in here
Y'all gon' make me lose my cool
Up in here, up in here

Or... really anything by DMX, I guess.

@Coin said:

@HelloRaptor I didn´t run into assholes all day.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAH.

I know the people you deal with day to day. You lie.

@Coin said:

You're both assholes.

I'm sure Eldritch will be ready by then!