Posts made by HelloRaptor

@Coin said:

@HelloRaptor said:

@Coin

As a staffer, I don't necessarily look for "shooting yourself in the foot". But I do look for, for example, Attribute+Skill combinations that seem hinky and that, when I look at the person's sheet, are the two stats they have at 5, whereas more logical/easily explained combinations would net them a significantly smaller benefit.

This might be more palatable to folks if white wolf/onyx path didn't so frequently abandon anything resembling logic when it came to coming up with many of the dice pools they do.

I don't really see that as a reason not to be discerning myself, and can't possibly give a single fuck less than I do if people's reason for shitty design is "it's shitty in the books, too". That is a horrible excuse.

Cool? Good for you? Rah, rah @Coin? My point was more that there's a lot of ways to look at some shit, and 'most logical' isn't the only one. Presumably whoever decided on Attr+Skill for this or that had some reason for doing so that made sense to them, even if it wasn't the most obvious choice, so weighing what you think makes the most logical, easily explained combination rather than just requiring them to explain why they chose what they did, just makes you an asshole not necessarily a diligent staffer.

That there are some other assholes out there who can't come up with a reason other than 'My Stat X is higher than my Stat Y.' doesn't really change that.

@Coin

As a staffer, I don't necessarily look for "shooting yourself in the foot". But I do look for, for example, Attribute+Skill combinations that seem hinky and that, when I look at the person's sheet, are the two stats they have at 5, whereas more logical/easily explained combinations would net them a significantly smaller benefit.

This might be more palatable to folks if white wolf/onyx path didn't so frequently abandon anything resembling logic when it came to coming up with many of the dice pools they do.

@Thenomain

On a wider scale, "overpriced" is determined by the market, and I'd like to see someone conclusively prove that Apple computers are priced higher than the market is willing to pay.

That is... not at all true. What? People are willing to pay for all sorts of overpriced shit, which is one of the reasons why things get overpriced so readily in the first place. Until people aren't willing to pay for it, there's little incentive to drop prices, and when you're effectively offering something people can't really get elsewhere, you're free to overprice your shit as much as you like until you find a breaking point.

If you really want an apple instead of an orange, and I'm the only guy who can sell you an apple, the fact that your craving for apples leads you to pay a 300% markup doesn't mean I'm not selling you some wildly overpriced shit. It just means you were really in the mood for an apple so were willing to put up with my bullshit to get one.

Hell, sometimes overpricing something is a goddamn business strategy. Convince enough people that something is way more awesome than it is and jack up the price according to your expectations of how gullible they are.

On the subject of Lucifer, it features D.B Woodside as an antagonistic angel, and if you don't know who that is, it's this suave motherfucker right here:

I'm not really into dudes, but damn he's pretty.

@Cobaltasaurus
Thanks for the clarification on The Strain. I don't necessarily agree, but the objections make waaaaaaaay more sense than 'boring'.

However:

@Coin
Fringe.

@Cobaltasaurus
Nah.

@Roz said:

Probably the bigger issue with Lucifer as he exists in the comics is how supremely disinterested he is in actual humans. Like, the idea of the comics Lucifer helping out the LAPD is laughable.

By way of clarity, not defense, in the show Lucifer isn't interested in the LAPD at all and mostly seems to hold them in contempt. The general premise of the pilot at least is that one of the humans he did take an interest in got killed in front of him, and it irritated him so he started to look into it, and along the way met another human who interests him because she seems immune to the influence he has over people (not just the sexy thing, but at all). At one point he asks her if his Father sent her, and it didn't really seem rhetorical even if she didn't actually get what he meant, because she's kind of anomalous.

So he's got no real interest in 'helping the police', but has some in figuring out what her deal is, and since he's functionally immortal and has a way with getting people to spill their guts, he's decided to stick his nose into her business.

One thing that is communicated well is Lucifer's contempt for "God's Plan", and how supremely bored he's been (with Hell, primarily, but on earth as well), which maches up pretty well. There's definately not the same disinterest though, no.

@Coin said:

@HelloRaptor said:

@Olsson said:

Wait, what comic is this Lucier thing about? Also give me a brief description of the show.

Lucifer, the comic. Created by Neil Gaiman as part of his Sandman run, but written by Mike Carey in his own series (and miniseries).

In the comics he's often more aloof and inscrutable, but that doesn't really play well on tv for a main character (Person of Interest and Blacklist aside).

While Red Reddington is certainly inscrutable to a point, I'd hardly call him aloof. He's downright personable. And Reese isn't even the main character of PoI at this point, which is why he works.

Seriously? Red is aloof pretty frequently. He's only personable if you've got his attention for some reason, in which case you're probably going to regret it, need it, or probably both very shortly. >_>

And Reese was the main character for nearly four seasons, so still stands as a good example.

@Bobotron said:
Other than using ClassicShell to get the Win7 interface back. I don't like the search on my taskbar, or its absence from the start menu, or even the fact that it includes bing search results. So I just dump the new menu/search bar entirely and stick with the Win7 start menu/taskbar.

I thin you have more control of updates in the Professional edition. For folks who only had a Home license I've just gone and wiped them, installed Win7 or 8.1 with an Ultimate/Pro (respectively) copy, run a crack to make it look authentic in the snapshot they take, then run the install for Win10 Pro and used authentication to make it legit.

Edit: Huh. Thought I posted this a while ago but when I didn't see it and went to hit reply, there it was.

@Olsson said:

Wait, what comic is this Lucier thing about? Also give me a brief description of the show.

Lucifer, the comic. Created by Neil Gaiman as part of his Sandman run, but written by Mike Carey in his own series (and miniseries).

In the comics he's often more aloof and inscrutable, but that doesn't really play well on tv for a main character (Person of Interest and Blacklist aside).

@Coin said:

@HelloRaptor said:

@Bobotron said:

@Olsson
Filthy Mage.

Those are the best kinds.

I frequently mutter to a friend of mine that I find it a shame the other games didn't use a not-identical-but-similarly-styled system for their powers (Disciplines, Contracts, Gifts, etc).

It takes a particular type of player to really be able to use that kind of system, and those players really like Mage (or can play it without scratching their heads and frustrating everyone else). Using it for every other gameline would limit the games to those types of players because no one else would want to deal with that shit, heh. Some people just want "Power A does B because C," and those people outnumber the people who prefer "Power A can do C, B, D, E, F, G, H, CC, CB, CD, CE, CF, CG, CCC, CCB, CBB, ..."

I do think Vampire has a little bit of it in that Devotions are fairly powerful and malleable and customizable. And you can get a lot of mileage out of Rites in Werewolf, if you're willing.

I will agree that Contracts, on the other hand, would work well this way (or even better, in a way that is more akin to how Arts and Realms worked back in oWoD). But Dark Ages: Fae did it, IIRC.

As @Olsson mentioned, there are plenty of people who play Mage pretty much by the numbers and never delve into the more complex stuff. With nMage laying a million and one spell effects out for you it's pretty straightforward. Not as straightforward, but I don't really see that as much of a bonus.

Note that I didn't suggest using the Mage system for magic directly, just something more similar to it than not. As you mentioned things like Devotions can be pretty malleable for those that want to delve into them, but games seem to act like you're some kind of thought criminal if you try.

Dark Ages: Fae was an amazing take on it for changeling magic, and I still weep that it got lost in the shuffle and not used as a basis for Changeling: The Lost's magic, yeah.

@Roz said:

@HelloRaptor said:

@Roz

I wish they'd just not even pretended to have optioned the material.

I've got a pretty high tolerance for things like this, usually, probably because I watch a lot of anime that do shit like deliberately using the same characters, names, faces, etc but swap around dispositions, relationships, situations, etc to tell largely different stories.

I've got the whole run of Lucifer in trade paperback sitting on my shelves, and I loved it to bits, but I'm 100% okay with a completely twisted up telling of the tale in a similar framework but with shit changed up. Honestly, Lucifer as a direct translation to screen (or even just the parts that really defined the character as he appeared in the comics) would probably make for shit television.

I said the above but my initial response was to pretend you were talking about the Battlestar reboot, because fuuuuuuuuuuuuck that show.

I actually have a fairly high tolerance for adaptation, too. It's just that almost every piece of plot available in the trailers, summaries, etc. are pretty diametrically opposed to the whole. When something begins to bear so little resemblance to the source material, what's even the point? I definitely didn't expect a direct adaptation, because the run of the comics is definitely not a television show.

And why do we need another gd police procedural!

It's about as much of a police procedural as Person of Interest is, which is to say... there are cops in the show, along with a vague suggestion of police work, but this is not even remotely in the ballpark of Law & Order or the like. At all.

And it actually bears a good bit of resemblance to the source material, at least in a literal sense. There are entire scenes that are taken directly from panels in the comics, right down to the way people are positioned, what's being said, etc.

Edit: To clarify, I mean that basically all the scenes in and around the Lux look to be taken right from the comics, including his confrontations with Amenadiel, and Lucifer's attitudes in the show generally match up with what he expresses in the comics as far as matters of Heaven, Hell, God, and so on go.

@Bobotron said:

@Olsson
Filthy Mage.

Those are the best kinds.

I frequently mutter to a friend of mine that I find it a shame the other games didn't use a not-identical-but-similarly-styled system for their powers (Disciplines, Contracts, Gifts, etc).

@Roz

I wish they'd just not even pretended to have optioned the material.

I've got a pretty high tolerance for things like this, usually, probably because I watch a lot of anime that do shit like deliberately using the same characters, names, faces, etc but swap around dispositions, relationships, situations, etc to tell largely different stories.

I've got the whole run of Lucifer in trade paperback sitting on my shelves, and I loved it to bits, but I'm 100% okay with a completely twisted up telling of the tale in a similar framework but with shit changed up. Honestly, Lucifer as a direct translation to screen (or even just the parts that really defined the character as he appeared in the comics) would probably make for shit television.

I said the above but my initial response was to pretend you were talking about the Battlestar reboot, because fuuuuuuuuuuuuck that show.

@Coin

Yep. It just ... it's boring. That's really what it is. It's just boring.

This doesn't even make sense to me. I could understand a few other complaints, my wife likes to hammer on how much she hates the costuming for the Master, but to say it's boring is like... I don't know, it'd be like you telling me you had someone suddenly put a gun in your face and immediately got an erection. I can only assume the fault is in how your head is wired rather than what you're looking at.

The Lucifer pilot was pretty good, but I wish they wouldn't hammer the "every woman [except for her] is compelled to want to fuck him" so much. We get it, yikes.

It sounds more like your gripe is with the characteristic itself than with it being hammered on, if only because... how would that even work? I guess they could just have long stretches where he doesn't interact with women other than her, or at least isn't shown to on screen, but that doesn't seem too likely either. If you can accept that it's a trait of his that people who are sexually attracted to him have difficulty not expressing it (I'm guessing it's 'anyone attracted to men' not 'all women', but we'll see.), how exactly would you suggest they handle it so as not to be rubbing it in your face? I'm not really sure how one could be established as true without resulting in the other.

@surreality said:

@HelloRaptor said:

Are you suggesting that if a handful of people started rambling about how they'd love to make a MLP-Transformers Crossover game, like Beast Wars only with magical ponies, and all using the WoD system you wouldn't think it was some silly shit that would never see the light of day?

GOD DAMN ALL THE THINGS!
...back to the drawing board.

The battles would be truly epic.

@Cobaltasaurus

Yeah, lingering on people's personal drama is totes lame. I hear Sense8 would have been way better if they'd skipped all of that too.

Unrelated:

I'm exactly two minutes and forty seconds into the Lucifer pilot, and I can already tell I'll love this show to a truly unhealthy degree.

@Coin said:

Fuck yeah, Constantine on Arrow.

This is the best thing. that guy as Constantine.

@Bobotron said:

So I got everything updated on my new laptop for Windows 10.

It seems quite nice. I've removed all the funky tiles I didn't want to deal with, but I've gotten all of my other stuff installed so far. Seems to be working quite well.

That's been my experience as well. I still can't get my popcap games to play, but all my other stuff seems to be working just fine, or even better than before.

@Coin

Unless, of course, tons of people isn't the point and it's more like a large tabletop game where the small amount of people playing are having fun.

I was going to make a snarky comment, but it turns out I missed copying the last bit of what I'd written, which is that these ideas might work fine for a tabletop game, because the small handful of people would fit around a table and could be reasonably sure everybody else involved actually has an interest in exactly the same shit.

I'd dispute the 'large' part, though. Most of these ideas barely glean enough participation to be a normal sized tabletop group. Either way, they're shit for a MU*.

I'm sorry, theorycrafting is kind of fun for me. I didn't know everything had to have a solid, identifiable, realistic goal. Sometimes I just like to chat about what I would do if I did something, and never really do it. Gasp, right?

Sure, me too. Are you suggesting that if a handful of people started rambling about how they'd love to make a MLP-Transformers Crossover game, like Beast Wars only with magical ponies, and all using the WoD system you wouldn't think it was some silly shit that would never see the light of day? Because I'm about 99% certain that you would point and laugh.

Sometimes, an idea is just a terrible one, and I don't really feel any shame in ridiculing terrible ideas regardless of why they're terrible, when people start talking about them like they're not. Having known you to do much the same in the past, I don't think you really disagree with that, we just disagree on what constitutes a terrible idea this time.

(And for the record: yes, I've seen small games with niche themes that have lasted upwards of a year. And a year, really, is a decent run for a small game; or any one instance of a hobby in which people are having a good time, especially now that we're not in our teens or laid-back twenties anymore.)

Again, we disagree on a pretty basic point. I'd consider a game that only lasted a year, assuming it was actually set up like an actual MU* and not just some mostly empty rooms for people to use like a tabletop game, to be an incredible waste of time. Especially given the more limited time people have to invest on a regular basis these days.

@Arkandel

And occasional even successful games have tried non-US settings - HM comes to mind as it was set in Vienna, Germany.

Leaving aside the Austrialulz, note that I said non-US, non-Eurocentric. There've been decent sized games set in Vienna or Paris, etc. Not so much Tehran, Riyadh, Khartoum, Damascus or Abuja. Cities I'd bet good money that most of the people reading this post couldn't identify by country on a best 3 out of 5 without googling, despite all being capital cities to have been featured on even the US news over the last few years. That's not to claim any superiority, I had to google a couple of them too.

@Olsson
No. It ranks up there with the two dozen other ideas that a handful of forum posters jump on like hipsters on artisanal kale where they enthusiastically masturbate one another over what an awesome idea it is until it finally sinks in that the pool of people interested in playing that shit is essentially the people posting, plus or minus two people.

Other examples include:

• Games set anywhere further back than the middle ages (see: ancient Egypt, Babylon, Rome, etc).
• Games set during any kind of mass social upheavel where it would take a strong focus (slavery, suffrage, etc)
• Any example of "I'd like to run XYZ but using Fate instead of XYZ.", because fuck off.
• Promethean <insert absolutely anything here>.
• Games set anywhere that isn't predominantly US or Eurocentric. (You could maybe get away with Russia, as long as you accept that it'll be the more European sort regardless of whether you're setting it in the west or not, and that absolutely everything will be filtered through youtube videos of Russians engaging in completely insane shit all the time, sprinkled with a lot of 'In Soviet Russia...' stereotypes.)

There's more, but if you've been around a while you've probably seen them crop up. It's nice to have dreams, I guess, but the reality is that none of this shit is going to actually draw enough people to be even remotely self-sufficient or worth the time and effort it'd take to put it together.