Posts made by ixokai

@bored said in Star Wars: Insurgency:

Took a look but honestly having FC characters makes it a very hard sell for me.

This is understandable. Some people won't do it: I don't really care, myself, because I have no interest in playing any Star Wars FC's.

The success rate for this on Star Wars games, in my personal experience, is a flat 0%. Especially picking a specific planet that isn't in any of the movies, I don't really understand the motivation.

Now this is less understandable to me: we wanted a planet with cities and jungles, where there's shipyards and miners. A diverse planet. The thing is, Star Wars doesn't present very many of those in the movies as options. There's Coruscant for the cities, but that's all it is: one gigantic city. There's Naboo, but it has Gungans and no. Other then that, what do you have? You have a couple jungle planets, a desert planet or two, an icy planet.

Corellia doesn't appear in the movies but it is elaborated in the EU, and really, we can define its setting pretty easily. Its cosmopolitan so we can run a planet-focused Insurgency type resistance, but its got wild spaces so we can tuck a rebel base off in the middle of a jungle, it is a Core World but with an independent streak so there's some good potential for tension between the Empire and the Rebels.

Heck, IMHO, even 'a single planet' is a huge scope for a game: basing a game over a whole galaxy seems like complete death to RP. While plots and events can take place all over Corellia (and the galaxy for that matter) via +temprooms and the like, the grid is Coronet City and the surroundings and that's where we intend 'most' RP to happen.

The motivation is to make it as easy as possible to log on and find RP without having to jump through hoops: if everyone's relatively nearby then its not super weird to have a Cantina scene, or have a random gunfight as an ISB team raids a rebel warehouse.

It's worth noting: this game is absolutely not following canon. It begins at the end of Episode IV, and we consider Rogue One canon, but everything that happens after players hit the grid will unfold according to plots people run and interests of players and actions of players.

We'll take inspiration from Episode V+, from the EU/Legends, but we are not scripting out the game going forward to match the canon that unfolds later.

Star Wars: Insurgency

Alderaan is no more, but news of that fact is only starting to leak out to the Empire. Depending upon who you ask, it was the most heinous act of villainy in history, or a sign of strength and defiance against terrorism.

The Battle of Yavin ended with the destruction of the Death Star, but to think that the Emperor has been laid low by that loss would be a grave miscalculation.

Throughout the Galaxy, the Rebellion and the Empire struggle, and between them the mercenaries, bounty hunters, slicers and traders who care not for alignment to either faction try to make a life for themselves.

Corellia is not the most important battle ground, but it is an important battle ground. It is a strategic asset, gifted with abundant mines that provide essential minerals for the making of durasteel alloy, and its impressive shipyards produce most of the Imperial fleet-- including the Star Destroyers that bring such dominance to naval battles.

For the Rebels to take a Core World will take a different type of fighting: it will take an Insurgency. For the Empire to keep the Core World will require them walking the knife's edge between crushing resistance and not sending the Corellian's (known for their independent and wild streak) right into Rebel hands.

And as is the case with every conflict, there's money to be made. Gangs, mercenaries, slicers, agents of the Hutt Cartel,... There is so much in the air here on Corellia that there are great opportunities to be had... if one is willing to embrace the risk.

--

Star Wars: Insurgency is a RhostMUSH game set almost immediately after the events of Episode IV: A New Hope. Although it takes place primarily on Corellia, plots can take place anywhere within the Galaxy, and (when we work it out) space combat and travel will be supported.

We are using Fate Core as the basis for the game system, with characters powered up a bit from the default rules as the Star Wars universe is a bit more cinematic then gritty.

As far as Force Users are concerned, in our version of the world, Order 66 happened but it was not as successful as in the canon, so more Jedi and potential Jedi escaped and are active in the world. Additionally, the Rule of Two was not a thing so there are more Sith and dark side users out there. There's also so-called 'grey' concepts that don't quite buy into either order.

But this isn't just a game for Jedi and Sith. Slicers, mercs, smugglers, commandos and the likes are all welcome and usable.

We allow Star Wars characters from both the canon movies, the prequels, and the Extended Universe/Legends. We also allow Original Characters of any sort. Star Wars Characters will (when we get this in) have activity requirements, though they won't be intense.

The game is in ALPHA state: we are in testing. RP is encouraged, apping is encouraged, but its important to note that specific details of +sheet's can not be guaranteed to not need revision when we move into BETA and then full opening. In ALPHA, we won't allow any player deaths, as we are continually play-testing systems and stats and game balance.

That said, the basic Corellia grid is complete, and most of the code is finished: the coder (hi) is finding it harder and harder to find things to do so he's been working on the wiki systems a lot.

As of now, it is no longer invite only but available for anyone to come check out.

The website is: http://www.starwars-insurgency.com/
The game is at: game.starwars-insurgency.com 1977

@Thenomain said in New Start Databases:

As much as I bitch about code, including mine, I have really only one thing I want my way: Put spaces after commas.

No, you monster.

Who the hell is talking about punishing anyone (let alone everyone) or slavish dedication to a pose order?

@Thenomain said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@ixokai

Following pose order is easy: Remember who is before you. That's it.

And yet, people constantly ask, 'is it my turn'? or 'who are we waiting on?'

On Marvel:1963, the answer is: ooc +po And its not a small game.

And no one harasses anyone. In big scenes we often do 3pr, but in combat events and some sorts of things taking turns just works better.

As for people who hate pose orders and want to just pose whenever, the problem I have with that is it means if you can type fast you are talking constantly and railroading everyone else. Having some structure to when to pose is a good thing, IMHO.

@Kanye-Qwest said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

I'm leery of this. I think it's fine for people who just want to follow a pose order, but as soon as someone gets chastised for NOT following a strict pose order, I'm much less ok with it.

I've played on two games now with code like this and this simply does not happen.

I am completely spoiled, but I desperately want a +po command to show the current pose order. I find I can't keep track of things anymore without it.

Basically, everytime someone says/poses something, they get moved to the end of the list. When everyone leaves a room it clears after a few minutes.

Pleeeeease.

I've encountered alt-cheating many times over the years, but its always caught (Except those I didn't catch, obviously) and people are rarely as clever at hiding who they are as they think they are.

But I never use IP address for tracking, or at least not automatically. Partially, because I once had two roommates that mushed with me: we all came from the same site obviously. Partially, because dynamic IP's are a pain.

Partially because its just not worth it.

I DO have +alts code that binds multiple characters to a single 'account', and I use it to idly monitor alts, but its mostly an honor system. If someone lies, they get all their characters banned. Mostly I don't use this for enforcement, though, but instead to do 'account-wide' stuff like mark bbposts read across all your alts if you read it on one, stuff like that.

I made a logger system (entirely from scratch; someone sent me half the code which inspired the ultimate design, and I don't know who made that originally, but this didn't use any of their code) for Marvel: 1963.

You basically @create an object, drop it, +log/make thing and its now a logger. When in the room the logger has a shortdesc that says if its on or off (and if on its bright about it).

You +log/capture thing, and it grabs everyone currently in the scene, the IC date, the location, the location's desc, and stores it all (there's commands to set these all individually)

When the scene is done, you +log/wiki thing, and it outputs the entire log properly formatted for copy-pasting into the wiki logs section. (You can also +log/show thing=5 to get the last few poses if you have an issue). Mess up a pose? +log/undo thing, and repose. No editing of logs required. Well, almost none. It typically takes me a good 30 seconds to post a complete log after a scene, with most of that made up of trying to think up a title.

I decided I preferred object-based manually-started logs over a system that logs to rooms automatically (even with a +poseclear or auto-emptying system) so its opt-in from a privacy perspective.

This is for Penn but it should be compatible with anything else, but it would require some tweaks to the room parent (basically, change get(%i0/shortdesc) to objeval(%i0,u(%i0/shortdesc)) so they can evaluate safely).

Separately, I have a +po (pose order) thing which does automatically track poses in locations (and clears when empty) without actually tracking content. I could have built pose-ordering into the logger, but since I already completely replaced say/pose/@emit to per-user colorize quoted speech, using that as the basis of storing pose order seemed easiest. Plus it lets you track poses even in private scenes.

(Neither +po nor replacing say/pose/@emit was my idea, I stole it from the 100. I just implemented it differently)

Anyhoo I can probably pull either of these systems together if someone wants them. The +po/etc system definitely requires Penn, but I have an implementation for Rhost. It totally won't work for MUX, though.

A misogynist. A racist. A xenophobe. A fucking child with skin as thick as a toddler, at best.

He is going to get the nuclear codes.

To the world: Sorry

@Alzie said in Is there a basics of CG out there somewhere?:

@ixokai ...Do whut? 2E removed merits that represented in game items but left the items in game leaving GM's and Wizard's having to find a way to represent said items mechanically knowing that these items don't compare to the merits in 2E because Onyx Path has explicitly said that they do not cost scale against the merits in 2E. The example given was fetishes. These are werewolf spirit relics which used to be represented by a merit in 1E. The merit is gone but they still exist in game. Onyx Path has explicitly stated they do not compare to the cost or breadth of merits in 2E and that there never will be a 'fetish' merit. So now you have to find a way to mechanically represent these things and 'price' them.

So...None of what you just said has any bearing on that. Especially not the part here since these things are most definitely still there.

I don't have to worry about merits that aren't there because they simply aren't there.

That's what notes are for. I don't see why a fetish has a cost at all: its like asking for a cost for a chair for someone who has crafting.

@Alzie said in Is there a basics of CG out there somewhere?:

@ixokai Also, I agree with @Thenomain that the move to flat XP has, if anything, made things more complicated. Especially since the 2e books are removing a lot of merits. Now games are having to find a way to represent those in a fair way when even Onyx Path itself says those things aren't the same cost as merits. See Werewolf 2e and Fetish.

Eeeh, I don't see this as an issue myself. My basic assumption is a game is either entirely 1E, or entirely 2E. I never at all supported the hybrid monstrosity that TR did when it half adopted 2E's system.

I see the upgrade from 1E to 2E a breaking change: you can't convert to it. I would never want to code the transition between the systems.

And that's said for me because Geist was my favorite 1E property and it seems it won't get converted.

But it is what it is: if I'm coding a 2E game, I code a set of rules, and in that situation, I don't have to worry about merits that aren't there because they simply aren't there. I don't have to worry about a way to represent things removed: they simply don't exist.

Now, if ya'll are right and the XP rules in 2E flat are more complicated, and you're surely more expert then I, fair enough. I still have a hard time believing its not encodable as a series of functions and rules. I just don't find XP calculation daunting.

But I also wouldn't do things like TR did, where you get a 1XP reduction for 'justification'-- for me, automated XP means the cost is set in absolute stone, taking into account all stats and various rules of those stats (this is my burden), but then that's it. If there's some time delay or such, we can do that too.

But I found 'blah blah bullshit reason, save an XP' ... horrible on TR. I never did it on purpose but a few times did it without thinking and just found it kinda embarrassing. I'd rather XP be something you don't question, myself. It just is.

@Thenomain said in Is there a basics of CG out there somewhere?:

@ixokai said in Is there a basics of CG out there somewhere?:

Was TR's codebase really that unstable? I figured it ran forever and had so many players and since I didn't really ever see much in the way if issues, that there weren't really many.

Because four excellent coders (well, three and me) did some amazing things to make sure it looked that way. Key work that @Glitch did on the system was the only reason I could do anything remotely close to the xp spend calculations, but it involved more or less starting a second stat system on top of the first.

Huh. Well good work! I had no idea.

You said mostly like three times, I feel like there's something on the order of 165% of reasons why the xpreq never went to full automation

That's pretty close to correct.

I just thought of another one:

Mostly each nWoD game line ended up with a couple dozen exceptions to the XP spending (many of them based on social orders and magical groups) that would have needed coding around. My decision at the time was: If the XP cost system couldn't determine which of several tiers of XP costs a stat would be, it would calculate the most expensive option. Players could submit non-calculated costs but they would also have to explain why.

Yeah, this is a difficulty. Its not insurmountable, but it is for sure an issue. With the move to a flat XP system (which TR never included, since it as the game of quadrillions of XP), I think NWOD won't have to worry about this as much.

I might be wrong, though. I'm kinda WOD'd out and so haven't looked closely at the post-GMC NWOD lines.

I generally trust people, but unsupervised I suspected people wouldn't speak up if they were being under-charged, but would make sure to self-check values if there was any chance of being over-charged. A healthy number of people complained about this, but I consider off-loading small issues bureaucracy to the initiator, where it can be minor, rather than a central processor, where the small bits add up, to be a fair design goal.

I prefer to approach situations as pro-trust: players are mostly not bad and are not going to cheat. That said, I also recognize they are prone to making honest mistakes. I think code can minimize these difficulties.

If I could have made the system more precise without losing what little sanity I had left, I probably would have.

TR wasn't my ideal, don't get me wrong. But it did good. And coders staying sane is a very serious requirement I'm not even joking about.

(This counts as my writing design notes, right?)

Of course it does

@Thenomain said in Is there a basics of CG out there somewhere?:

@ixokai

The Reach never got full automated XP spending because the code staff was too busy putting out fires on a daily basis,

Was TR's codebase really that unstable? I figured it ran forever and had so many players and since I didn't really ever see much in the way if issues, that there weren't really many.

but mostly because the setup had the system as largely inconceivable for fully automated spending, but MOSTLY because staff could and wanted to keep half an eye on spending patterns.

But mostly because it didn't seem critical to code beyond what was there. Even with what was there, there were non trivial moments when staff needed to take a more direct involvement in the spending.

You said mostly like three times, I feel like there's something on the order of 165% of reasons why the xpreq never went to full automation

That said, none of these reasons seem unreasonable. I don't begrudge TR not quite getting there: it was fast 'enough', really. And...

There was no one answer, other than there being so many hours in the day and so much anyone can do before burning out and that "good enough" is a legitimate goal. (edit: Which itself isn't a single answer.)

Perfect is the enemy of good.

@Ganymede said in Is there a basics of CG out there somewhere?:

@ixokai said in Is there a basics of CG out there somewhere?:

See there we have one big flaw: any chargen that involves 'hand-setting XP' is a failure to my mind. Yes, I've played on these games, and found the process difficult and painful as a player.

Generally, WoD CGens involve the second step of submitting a list of XP spends to staff; that's what I meant by "hand-setting." I don't consider the process difficult or painful, given that most places also require submission of an XP spend via +jobs after CGen.

This happens, yes, but considering many games-- TR included-- had automated XP spends. So, at that point, why not include automating those xp spends in chargen?

For me its not the issue of the spends exactly, its about the system. Systems are complex. Some people are experts or near-experts, they have no issue writing up a character in notepad. I like to think I fall into this group: so I usually don't have an issue. But a lot of people aren't experts, and do have difficulty with making characters and ensuring all the rules follow.

That said, I do hear a lot of issues players have with chargen. I think they are common: and I think most problems aren't 'learning commands' but instead 'knowing what to input'.

Most problems, IME, are related to understanding the system and not that the code is an issue. The player frustration is, IME, one of throwing them into the wild unknown and expecting them to do everything right. A chargen guides, leads, and this minimizes player frustration.

I might be wrong but its what I believe and what I will commit to doing my best to achieve.

You're not wrong in the slightest; you simply have a different perspective. You want to automate the process as much as possible, and I can't disagree with that; however, when I am staff, I appreciate the meager amount of interaction as a sort of fail-safe against demanding a re-submit.

I'm not against having more staff involvement: I just think the code should do everything reasonably possible for the code to automate. As I said, I don't do open chargen games: I have history that makes them bad to me. I want staff oversight of characters. I want connection between staff and players.

This connection just doesn't need to be specifics of numbers that can be automated. Instead it can be about interesting tidbits in backgrounds. Or notes.

Personally, I haven't had much in the way of problems with CGen either by submission or by automation in the 20+ years I've played. The only problem I bump into are wait-times for responses in the approval process.

Here we disagree, but second hand. I have not personally had much issues with CGen, by submission or automation, but I have heard huge amounts of issues with both from others. And I seek to rectify this.

That said: God Shadowrun sucks.

@Thenomain said in Is there a basics of CG out there somewhere?:

@ixokai said in Is there a basics of CG out there somewhere?:

Also, don't say 'trust me'.

Wow, you've gone from conversational to confrontational in short order. For someone who spent almost the entire post positing what I may have been thinking, I can imagine where these trust issues may be coming from, but maybe a little less of the defensiveness.

I disagree. Any statement that says "trust me" implies accepting the rightness as-is.

If you have an argument, make it. Don't ask me to trust your conclusions because you say 'trust me'.

Edit to add: Defensiveness? Ooookay.

@Ganymede said in Is there a basics of CG out there somewhere?:

@ixokai said in Is there a basics of CG out there somewhere?:

For most cases with most players there's a review and an approve and that's it. This can't be argued as anything but more efficient then hand-statting to my mind. Maybe I'm missing something entirely.

I think the disconnect exists at a circumstantial level.

What you seem to be describing is a system that checks on a pure point-by-point basis; that is, the only function of staff in the process is to ensure that all the dots are put in the right place. On that level, I concur that CGen functions that allow players to set them are more efficient from a staff perspective. But maybe you and I worked on different WoD MU*s; that's just not how it goes or went. (It's entirely likely that we both worked on the same games, actually.)

The general WoD character approval process also involves, generally: (1) looking at a background; (2) checking Breaking Points to make sure they are sensible; (3) reviewing +notes for Merits to make sure they are sensible; and (4) hand-setting XP spends out of CGen. This presumes that the automated CGen checks for pre-requisites, otherwise that's another thing to check. And that could be another thing to check if there are problems with the pre-requisite checks. So, there's going to be staff-involvement -- generally -- above and beyond simply checking point totals.

See there we have one big flaw: any chargen that involves 'hand-setting XP' is a failure to my mind. Yes, I've played on these games, and found the process difficult and painful as a player.

I will not put out a chargen for any game system that involves anything but approval from staff. Notes, breaking points, all of that: at the best they are just approved in a single step. At worst if a player suggests something, you reject it to resubmit. But something like XP? If the game gives XP to all players and you don't have XP as part of chargen, your chargen has failed, IMHO.

The chargens I have always done has been focused on the concept: once you get out of it, you're done. Chargen stops ... 50% at absolutely worst case of things not allowed, and maybe an app here or there requires sending back to modify notes. But this is not usual. Not if chargen is clearly documented. It'll happen. Just less.

Then in the majority of cases... your job is simply to approve.

Plus, as I said before: I like having interaction with my players. Back when, I didn't just point them to the room and say GO FORTH AND MAKE THYSELF. Players interested in joining asked me what I was looking for or wanted or needed, and we actually had conversations to that end. Players wanted to discuss their concepts and how they'd fit in. Players wanted to talk about rule interpretations. Players wanted to talk, and I was happy to talk with them.

I like having interaction with players too, but I like taking out as much effort this interaction requires as possible. As a coder I believe my job is as I said: player convenience, player convenience, (duplication intended), staff convenience, my own annoyance.

I believe by taking this philosophy and model I can support greater interaction with players, as I see chargen not as removing interaction, but clearly specifying what the player intends and supporting them through -- and this is very important to me -- a system they do not understand fully.

I'm not perfect, my code isn't perfect, but I go listen to players and everytime one has difficulty with something I try to make it better.

To me chargen wins over hand-statting without any reasonable argument in that it is easier then the opposite. Is it possible for a player to be frustrated doing it? Learning the commands? Yes, its possible: and where possible I will make it better. But a player can ALSO be frustrated by having to do it manually without any support.

My goal: making applying easier, more robust, more clear. I want more people to succeed and have a good experience. I think bending my skills towards making chargen solves this and reduces frustration greatly.

I might be wrong but its what I believe and what I will commit to doing my best to achieve.

@Lithium said in Gauging interest in a 20th Edition Game.:

@ixokai Can't please everyone.

Can't indeed.

For OVampire, if I had any power to care for vampire agian (I don't), I'd want a game to be Camarilla only and focus on intraclan conflict. Anarchs are crushed, reinforce the Brujah theme of rebellion and Gangrel theme of outsiders. Or, Anarch only: the Cam bastards are out of there and we're all somehow making our own, but what it his world we're making? Or Sabbat only, ... insert insanity here ...

Tossing in cross-sect conflict in OVampire just tosses out huge themes that those sects embody.

@Lithium said in Gauging interest in a 20th Edition Game.:

For what it's worth, a Camarilla/Anarch conflict... is about the /only/ thing that'd make me play a Vampire in any version of WoD.

Ever.

I love me some Anarch goodness.

And a Camarilla/Anarch conflict is exactly what would completely turn me off on a game.

Gotta love OWOD.