Posts made by il-volpe

I think the truth is, everybody does wish fulfillment RP at some point or another, and as some element of nearly every character. Not all the time, and not only. Same way everybody wants to win some. Of course they do.

Every so often, yeah, one runs across a player who really seems, from every angle you look, to be doing only wish fulfillment and want all and only triumphs and glory. But more often, it's just an accusation used to promote the idea that somebody deserves less consideration in a conflict. It is also very often projection. Abelard wants to roll, protests being simply declared to have failed, but Brigid will not get the glory if Abelard succeeds, so she says Abelard "just wants to win," or "just wants his character to be super-cool all the time." In reality both want to win and be super-cool, and neither wants only that all the time, but both are likely to suggest the other is greedy for wins and wish fulfillment and rejecting other play. Just how likely they are to make these accusations depends on individual temperament, individual mental state at the time, individual past experiences of such claims working or not, how much OOC-cooperative vibe/tradition exists on the game, and (as mentioned in the incentivizing failure thread) how confident those players are of getting more chances.

I can't be the only person who thinks that roadsigns near construction areas that read "Kill or injure a worker $75,000" seem more like an offer than a warning. Who's writing these things, Eli Roth?

@faraday Spot on.

Haha, I still want to do a 'The Magicians' MU, and that would play with this kinda thing, since part of the theme (at least in the first novel) was that feel when you're the brightest thing in your HS and go to a university where you are distinctly not, and have to reconcile with being the House Red of Genius. (It's really wine and will give you a real headache, but it's nothing to write home about.)

@faraday Yep. It'd have to be only for GM-called rolls or people will roll for loopy stuff and not just for the fun of it.

Mwaha, yeah, re: merits and flaws. I tend to forget them when making characters 'cause I don't let players use them when I run table-top.

@horrorhound Now I'm all curious.

I can see a deal where you get a fifth of an extra die, or a tenth of a reroll for every fail/botch, so you can save 'em up and do spectacular stuff if you screw up enough. That could be fun.

(But alas, is still subject opportunity shortage issues.)

@arkandel Yep.

I'm more-or-less against XP as a plot-reward on MUs, since getting to participate in a plot/event (especially one that's risky and meaningful and not a birthday party) is itself a reward more desirable than XP. The extra XP seems like, here, you did such a good job eating cake that you deserve an ice cream too. Some most intense 'no fair fucking favouritism' feels came from hearing somebody talk about how many "luck"/"karma" rescue-me-with-a-reroll-or-a-deus-ex-or-I'll-die points they'd spent when other (equally active with older or same-age PCs) players never had call to even consider using them.

McGuffins are under-used, and your point (very firmly) stands in that case, and also in the case of IC respect rewards.

@kk

Also suck:

6. The sixth failure in a row.

7. The failure that makes an ordinarily indifferent-appearing GM suddenly seem all eager. e.g. You've been waiting weeks for a response on your attempts to investigate the ocelot, which is what you want to play, but y'know, staff time is limited. In the meantime you botch a +urinate roll and the GM pounces on you to give you a scene where you get bladder stones, which is not what you want to play.

(7 can be easy to do accidentally as a GM, if you automate or run on auto when you sort/triage your docket.)

I am thinking of the time I was in a shopping mall waiting to go to the shopping mall movie theatre and there was a display of children's crayon drawings. All of them were of dolphins, except one that showed a fleet of black helicopters attacking the Statue of Liberty.

A note identified the elementary school where they'd been produced and said the artists were responding to the prompt 'What I Love About America'.

@derp Nope. Fulcrum is up and I think hasn't been mentioned here, but it's classicly multi-sphere, dunno if wraith and demon are included.

@hobos said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

Interesting and realistic story has always been enough incentive for me to fail, but I wouldn't want to fail at something that I have designed my character to be really good at, especially if there wasn't much opportunity to do that thing.

"Wanting to shine" in this case is just... wanting to play the character you wrote.

This.

I've been accused of "just wanting to win" when what I wanted was to roll. I wrote a character with weak spots all over, and had GM fiat say he failed at one of the few things he was written and statted to be good at. To the benefit of another pc mine was declared to have behaved as if he'd botched rolling a seven-die pool six or eight times in a row.

When dice do this it's a drag (and I very much encourage people playing/running dice-pool systems to use the auto-success option) and can definitely lead to "Oh fuck this, I'm not having much fun anyway and now I've had this precious rare chance to do what my PC is good at and failed, this game isn't worth RPing the also-not-fun aftermath," departures. When it's not dice but a GM's call, of course it will inspire resentment. If you really really must do it, for pity's sake, say, "Sorry, it really is for the good of the game, thank you for taking one for the team, I'll spotlight you soon to make up for it." And do it.

@kk said in How can we incentivize IC failure?:

But not every character is the center of the over arching storyline.

Some players are fine with that and don't even want to be central. On my current active characters my characters are minions/support characters and etc and that is intentional..

Yeah, this is a thing that ought to maybe be better supported.

It tends to be sort of built-in with character concept -- you make a bridge-crew PC, expect to be central if you show up. Make a bartender, you're supporting cast.

It might be interesting to see what happened if you let people tag their alts -- hero, support, background (antagonist? 'Fifth business'?) and aim to make it so.

@ghost said in [How can we incentivize IC failure?](/post

So with that in mind I think that IC failure would be much easier for the MU community if the pace was a bit faster.

You've got it.

I would say it's maybe not so much about pace, but opportunity, which pace is part of.

People generally want to see their PCs do cool things, which usually means succeeding. Most people don't really want to never fail, as the removal of risk takes some fun out of things. But when failure comes with the wondering how long it will be before you get another chance, or knowing that it'll be ages, the desire to meet that RP goal and do the cool thing has more urgency.

I don't think it's actually all that common for GMs to actively fudge things so a favourite gets to succeed. Favourites just get more opportunities, and more often ones catered to their abilities. It can be self-fulfilling; favourite players are more fun for GMs 'cause they take failures well and happily turn them into more RP, but because they're favourites they know that botch won't be the last important thing they get to do for three months and that they've a good chance of success next time. Make it a mighty chore and a long wait for Abelard to get to do a scene where he robs a vending machine and watch him overreact when he fails, even though there's nothing at stake.

I imagine it's much more common to actively fudge to have somebody fail when they've gone after a plot hook meant for somebody else, or have found a solution the GM hadn't considered which would close things prematurely. Sometimes this is necessary, nobody's GM-creativity is always on to make fun-for-all from every and any eventuality. But it's also the favouritism I've heard the most bitter complaints about, and yeah. It's no bloody fun to have been trying for weeks to investigate the ocelot and get nothing, then see the NPCs give everybody important information about the ocelot.

This isn't constructive, but I have always wanted to app Baytor on a comics game just to see what would happen

In library-land, helping people find something new to read that they'll probably like is called "reader's advisory" and it's a skill they kinda-sorta teach the capital-L librarians in grad school. Ask a librarian to demonstrate.

The most charming sci-fi convention guest of all the con guests I've ever seen was Andrew J. Robinson, who admitted that at the time he was still in deep mourning for Garak and had been for quite some time. And read to us from his (as yet unpublished) Garak novel, complete with Garak voice and eyeballs.

No answers there, but you're a long way from alone.

The children of one of my mother's friends have caused the middle school to be evacuated. They brought a durian to school.

In Colorado, where the school admins had no idea what that stench was.

My grandmother, who once poured a box of powdered cayenne pepper into the forced-air heating system at her High School, would be proud.

I am considering carrying a durian around to improve social distancing compliance.

BTW, my flag-pole is like this: https://www.instructables.com/Build-you-own-Flagpole/

except it's just one top rail bolted to a big wooden gate-post. El cheap-o.

@macha Made my day. Or month. I frickin' framed it.

Achievement unlocked.