Posts made by HorrorHound

I fucking adore Smite, and Kali is not scary-looking enough...WHERE THE FUCK IS HER SKIRT OF ARMS?!

That is all.

Also..I will play the Overwatch Beta.

@The_Supremes said

Retirement is an alternative to capping. Congratulations, you won. Time to start over with something new, maybe we'll keep this bit around for use as a powerful NPC and we'll ask you to cameo, etc. Still rubs people the wrongway sometimes but I think it's a nice enduring reward that doesn't necessarily unbalance the stock of active PCs as hard.

I always loved the idea of retiring my PCs into the background of the game to maybe be used later in some epic plot. I mean, anything in Vampire that is Elder and Above gets...boring...to play. Redundant and, eventually, antagonistic to other characters but more so players. I know of atleast two people whom are sort of forced to be the game's boogymen, because without that threat, others, would go a bit ape, and that to me is a fucked up Mantle for players to have to adopt. Just to play their characters.

Of course, I am also a fan of pwipes every three years.

@Thenomain @Ide @Duntada

I share Theno's and Dun's perspectives. Using Mage as a continuing example, what I see on MU*'ing is a need for ST-only Antagonists, and a need for something to counter your White Knights With Fireballs: Paradox.

But not Paradox you can channel, counter, absorb or anything like that. I mean, you nuke a street gang, and you as a player +submit Paradox, and you get...say, five dots to fill. An entire gang? This fills all five.

The STs are now required to run a scene.

Turns out, that gang, was on the payroll of not just the Camarilla, but also had ties to the Giovanni, Setites and now the Euthanatos and Technocracy are coming after you for rocking too many boats.

Good luck.

@ThatOneDude

Nah.

@acceleration said in PVP games/elements?:

Hi,

I'm @ThatOneDude's friend in question and we've been having this discussion for a couple of weeks. You guys have given some really cool feedback so far and we're basically trying to figure out how we would set this up and balance it.

So, first, what we like about WoD, or rather, what we envision it to be:

We like playing in this universe because we enjoy the danger that comes from being pushed into corners, badassery, politicking, backstabbing and genuinely dark elements that come with the genre. We want death and destruction, conspiracies (not Conspiracies, though those too), and struggle, but we also want to see character growth, heroism, and redeeming qualities. We love complexity, dark moments alongside humorous moments, and the question of 'What is it to be human?' that great stories can put out there.

The easiest way to do this would just be to run a tabletop with a few friends. I'm pro-this, but @ThatOneDude has rightly pointed out that MU*s offer the benefit of being able to really expand who you play with, which makes for great dynamics. But of course, putting everything into the hands of the players turns things into a sandbox, which typically isn't that interesting.

So, we've basically broken this down into several issues, but the main one is:

We need a metaplot.

The reason we all RP is because we enjoy a good interactive story, right? If the main goal was to run around and get to level 99, or to give you an alternate identity and social life, there are plenty of games out there that can accomplish it without us putting in all the effort of setting a game like this up.

However, running a metaplot is incredibly staff-intensive, which is likely to lead to burnout, particularly if the game gets bigger than we can plan for. Since no one's getting paid to run a game, we can't be around 24/7 to make stuff happen.

To take some of the pressure off, we'd like to:

1. Build as much lore infrastructure as possible that can be taken advantage of by PRP-runners.

More established lore, more pre-written NPCs and/or NPC templates at specific levels, and possibly a few 'stock plots' that can be retold and spun differently to have different effects on the landscape. My personal feeling is the more that's clearly written about the universe, the less likely it is people may run PRPs that are too unbelievable for the world, as well as make them easier to spot.

However, we understand PRPs have different quality levels and that providing XP bonuses for running them tends to lead to 4/5 of them being super railroad plots, monster-of-the-weeks which have no lasting impact, or becoming scenes indistinguishable from a social scene with a news bulletin at the end.

What's the solution to this? Well, we could force staff to read all the logs... but see above where this can't be our 24/7 job. So here's our working solution to that. Instead of giving a flat amount of beats and a checklist, we think we'd like to require basically 1-3 line answers to the following questions:

• Give a short summary (1-3 lines) of the plot.
• Who took the biggest risk in your plot? What was it? Did it pay off?
• Did any of your players take any surprising actions with their characters? What were they?
• Did any of your players manage to alter the direction you were going with this scene through IC action? How?
• Did this scene give your players any subsequent hooks for investigation into a bigger plot?

A flat amount of beats can be awarded to players as per the book rules, but I'm thinking giving small beat bonuses for risks taken by characters, particularly ones with negative consequences, is a decent model. I also think that putting STs into the mindset of moving stories along instead of checking beats off is a better recipe. We really would like to reward quality rather than quantity.

We want player STs to be able to influence the world, albeit possibly in limited ways. There's inherent possible unfairness that can come into running plots that specifically benefit your friends, for example. We haven't worked out exactly how to handle that yet, and it ties quite a bit into part B of this issue.

2. Encourage PVP in order to allow players to drive the plot themselves.

This one is hazier. Both @ThatOneDude and I love the dynamics that come from PVP. We've had some great times fighting each other ourselves, in fact! To us, player conflict is a valuable experience, but we know it often leads to OOC drama, and where there's OOC drama, well, there's the Hog Pit. So re: preventative measures, here's what we have so far:

• No PK until your PC has been active for a certain amount of time. I'm thinking from somewhere between 2-4 weeks of activity. I'm also leaning toward a no alts policy, only backup characters, but that's still under discussion.
• Any premeditated murder needs to be declared to staff via a job at least 24 in advance.
• Non-premeditated first time altercations between any two characters can only result in beat downs.
• You can kill in self-defense. Yes, that would mean you could be provoked into a fight that could end in your death! That's the risk you take by swinging first.

Of course, we will also declare that we want to be pro-player-conflict and discourage whining so as to prevent staff burnout. Them's the breaks, if you can't handle the heat, get out of the kitchen, etc. etc.

Edit: (I forgot to write this part)

We also want to reward PVP, of course. And risk-taking in general! Therefore I'm for giving some sort of XP bonus for dying in a scene, but this too is mechanically very hazy. @ThatOneDude pointed out to me that large XP disparities between characters means stronger characters tend to snowball while weak characters can easily be picked off. This is why he's for reducing XP to 50% upon death, where I'm more pro-XP cap. More stuff that needs to be worked out that we haven't found a good solution to yet. Suggestions are welcome.

We Need Metaplot:

Set your game one year exactly before The Week of Nightmares.

Gasp
You mean my magely Mage of Mage can't have babies?!

@somasatori

I am for, and against, OOC-Masq. But then if you look at my wiki pages, there is nothing deceitful there. It is pretty much out in the open. Which is how I like to play, OOCly, and I enforce it when I can.

But, yeah, Sabbat Scum Must Die. Fear the Sword-Breaker Gargoyles.

@ThatOneDude

Which is why violence solves all problems, and if it does not? You are not using enough of it. But, where I started, such things had a really simple solution. If you die, you die.

Have I been playing WoD wrong? All World of Darkness games are PvP. If your Splat interacts with my Splat, you die, sucka. If you have what I want, you die, sucka. If I fail frenzy, you die, sucka.

@Lithium People are discovering the power of Backgrounds again, and with more people embracing CoD/WoD, I have seen many more Archetypes.

@hedgehog Find me a decent place to play, and I got your Redcap.

@Coin Hush.

@Rick-Sanchez said in World (Chronicles?) of Darkness Concepts You Would Enjoy RPing with:

@HorrorHound You're right. They are marked individually. So they could eventually track him down, but the thing is, this detail just gives me basis for him to, uh, diversify the pool. Counterfeit a few different benjies, and then spend them on small purchases, and eventually get more legit ones. The more unique numbers you add to his mix, the harder it gets to find him; I'd imagine it'd be logarithmic, too, as opposed to linear.

It would make it seem less deterministic. Then there's the possibility that the caster just goes, "Yeah, well, I'll use Matter 2 instead of the normal Matter 1. Now I can make small 'stylistic' changes like making the serial numbers unique."

Wow, I wonder if we could take this farther, though, and make a character based around counterfeiting all sorts of shit, not just money. If you can copy a grimoire with Prime 1, Matter 1, what could you require to copy an Artifact? Or a Fetish?

Could I add Space 2 to this to counterfeit paperwork from afar, or Forces 1 to override electronic records in a computer system?

A character who has a bunch of low-dots all over the place, but whose modus operandi is counterfeiting/fabricating all the little details required to make things go his way could be a really fun concept, imo.

Welcome to the Ultimate Mage-Anarchist.

Use Entropy, and add some Mind to boost the need to spend. Bring the System down. One of your False Bennie's being held? See your Vice changed to Greed for a day.

Do it.

@Rick-Sanchez said in World (Chronicles?) of Darkness Concepts You Would Enjoy RPing with:

I had an idea recently. There's a spell in the Mysterium called Copy Grimoire. It requires Prime 1 and Matter 1, and with it, you can, on a Lasting basis, copy a grimoire. It's Extended, as well, so it requires patience.

What if you wanted to make convincing counterfeits of things, though? Given roughly the same material, you could make a duplicate of it, as I surmise, with just Matter 1. These are for mundane objects only. I mean, if you can copy supernatural stuff with Prime 1, Matter 1, can't you copy mundane stuff with just Matter 1?

But he could be an entire persona based on fake shit. Take a wad of cash he got from the bank, duplicate it. And then duplicate that again. Ad infinitum. Redistribute an immense amount of wealth directly to himself with money that's counterfeit, yet indistinguishable from the real thing, to the extent that even the best (mundane) experts wouldn't be able to tell.

And this wouldn't necessarily be a whole character, but a particular scheme that a starting character could pull off. And pretty much without consequence, unless you're contriving them.

Bills are (to my knowledge) marked as individuals, not as print-sessions, and so eventually he could be caught. Which may be sort of awesome; Interpol looking for his super-awesome counterfeit machine.

I love Tolkien's world. I hate his writing. If you would like a lovely take on said world - 'The Last Ring-Bearer' is recommended. The disgusting tribals vs. The unstoppable industrials.

Also, personally, as great a writer as he is...I see what you're doin' with them eagles, guy, and I hate it.

So, do you guys normally froth and bark at each other like this?

@Duntada said in RL things I love:

I am still so torn on who to support in New Reno.

On the one hand I have ancestors who were part of the Blackfoot Tribe, and that's actually who the legion are... on the other hand NCR, have to represent the west coast.

Legion. Because.

Ya'll motherfuckers need Caesar.

@mietze said in RL Anger:

I mentioned women because yes, on the surface maybe a lot of people might think Awww what a nice/special thing, but I think it's mostly other women that might feel that twinge of assault alert if it actually happens to them. Maybe guys would feel scared in that way though, dunno.

And yeah, it's the couple of requests that are denied followed by weird visit that freaked out my suite mate where he refused to give his name and made her feel uncomfortable enough that she warned me in a email about some stranger looking/asking about me, and then this final letter last night revealing his identity.

Though in my case this would be showing up with all that stuff after 30 years. In case anyone was wondering, it's not romantic. I get FB messaged from old boyfriends now and then (it is a thing that people look up people they used to feel attached to, I've reconnected with a couple of junior high besties who have become solid friends again).

But something about this really creeps me out. still feel disturbed.

You need a snub .44, and also maybe an Order of Protection.

@Duntada said in RL Anger:

I live in California. We don't have enough water for showers every day. You have to accept that sometimes people are just going to smell in the summer.

Lazily floats on Lake George.