Posts made by Jeshin

@Packrat

It'll be blue skies by tomorrow, you wait and see.

@Arkandel

The biggest issue I have with online tabletop is the feeling like my players are not 100% engaged. The downside to them being at home is pets, kids, spouses, roommates interrupting. There's also those people who get easily distracted and are playing a MU or watching a show or something in the background while being a player in your game. Out of the dozens of games I have run the feeling that I didn't make a compelling enough session is probably the most consistent thing with online vs in person. You really have to just trust people won't show up consistently if they didn't enjoy it. I find that voice over text (which is preferred by most of my players) helps this because people tend to be more engaged when there's tabletalk than when it's all just text RP.

I also always go big with my groups and trim the fat to account for the online vs in person chance of falkiness.

Discord

Avrae.io

DnDbeyond

If you don't care about maps, want a good voice system, and want easily shareable rolls this is a good alternative. I currently run 2 campaigns and a play by post campaign with dnd 5e. They are all utilizing Avrae.io now.

@gangofdolls

I was specifically answering Tempests question about Botulisms game. So nothing I said applies to Spirit Lake, for clarification.

@tempest

There is a list of archetypes (roles) once those are up that's it. You can make 'alts' but not in the sense you have another character. You can make supporting cast which you just write from your existing character bit (you guys call them bits right?) and if your character dies (horror game death probable) then you can use these side roles SRs to continue participating in the story.

EDIT: All this information refers to Horrormu to answer Tempest's question and not Spirit Lake.

Don't listen to @Sab with all those chain restaurant foods. He knows a kick ass hookah bar near ASU. Get him to setup a meeting and we can all get some Middle-eastern/Turkish food and hit the hose.

Also there are some pretty fun adult amusement things like adult go carts that go 30mph+ and indoor skydiving. Not exactly taking advantage of Arizona's natural beauty but also might not be around where you live.

Phoenix has some great restaurants I would check out the food scene.

I would also check out the Phoenix Zoo if that is something you're into.

If you like drinking there's Mill Ave and Scottsdale Old Town.

There's also a weekly art walk, you'd have to google that Phoenix Art Walk where you can check out street artists and the like.

A server is like what 100 bucks a year, 200 a year?

When I peeved about system discussion going on in the hogpit it wasn't to create an officially recognized queue or anything it was just system discussion interspersed with you monster and cussing and other random attacks without any substance seemed counter productive. At the very least this thread does appear to be a degree less hostile than the hogpit peeves thread discussions.

Still Kudos to @Meg using her catchy name to create it, my name is far to weak to have sustained such a result.

System Question

The Clue systems primary issue appeared to be creating to much overhead work for staff to continue to generate clues. The new system basically sets it so that if 5+ people know a clue you have very good odds of uncovering it in a short timeframe. It does however push new clues further out. With this adjustment to the rate of new clue generation will staff be maintaining the same clue writing style or will they be shifting towards a less is more approach where clues are perhaps more substantive than they have been in the past? I know some clues are very helpful but other clues seem more tidbits or very vague meant to either lead players to ask around or continue their investigation for more clues to create the lattice of understanding. That bread crumb approach would (from an outside observer) appear to create staff overhead too since someone might keep investigating the same issue for months and be needing new clues along the way if it's untread or lightly tread ground.

@tempest

A commoner with clout 20 and like 100,000 prestige which you can get by sneezing can generate 100s of resource per week. More prestige is better this is accurate but clout is the gold which makes the system run in a lot of ways.

@sparks

Serious question

Why not just remove the scoreboard thus obfuscating prestige during tuning? If the issue with prestige is purely competitiveness and not the knock on effects of mechanical benefits in other systems? If mechanical benefits in other systems is also an issue than just lower the existing softcap a bit like you did for modeling individual items and outfits (although that's a hard cap).

It seems odd that staff would halt the development of magic, possibly the most sought after system or shardhavens (automated dungeons) for the fine tuning of a system that will probably need to be retuned again if it links with magic and shardhavens in anyway?

@roz

Knowing the math backend of a system is like knowing odds in poker. The odds for poker have been known for awhile now. There are books discussing it. There are a lot more books discussing poker strategy and human behaviour at the table and manipulating it. Knowing the most efficient means of engaging with a system is beneficial for everyone. The players engaging with it so everyone is aware of what is 'optimal'. It's beneficial for the staff (who probably knew it when they built it or shortly thereafter) if the best way to engage in a system isn't the primary method of engagement. Why isn't it? Should the numbers be shifted to make the player selected method of engagement better than the wonky mathematical way of engagement? I'm unsure how Groth views it but when I'm seeing a divergence from the 'optimal' method of doing something and the player method I'd like to close that optimal method and shift the benefits to the organic option.

@pyrephox

Staff implemented a 1.5 million per item and 5 million per outfit prestige gain cap during the assembly. This means that pound for pound insane opulent creations are worse than a snazzy silk outfit. This means there should be no system complaint that a crafter/house would spend 100,000s or millions on an item. They are not exploiting some scaling of the system they are in fact throwing money away. Which is fine.

The only issue there would be with the $$$ value of items is if the barrier of entry to 'competitive' benefits was so high as to exclude the bulk of the grid or potentially exclude individuals from modeling but require entire houses to commit to a modeling item/outfit to make it effective. Which isn't the case, but that would be an issue if it was like 1 million silver value item/outfit or bust to get appreciable gains.

@jibberthehut

Alas it would have been better for my argument if someone had used +work to get the money to fund the item to demonstrate engagement via extra coderuns.

However the whole RP bent of the item and other items like it is the most valuable engagement story/character development engagement so that still does make my point that a single model coderun can represent engagement with the 'system' that expands past that one player and that one command!

@sunny

I believe that specific suggestion is to reduce the exploit of create outfit, model outfit, dispose of outfit. Also staff have stated they want to stop such things as having an outfit of pieces that are - or a shirt or for model either in the sdesc or description (I assume). The solution is have clothing need to be worn for X amount of time before unlocking the option to model it. The other suggestion was to cause materials that were gained via junking to be flag/tagged differently.

While modeling then junking then reusing the material is possible apparently it isn't widely done.

@sunny

Staff are trying to solve engagement, feel bads, and time sink for staffers.

Players are trying to solve perceived exploits within the system, imbalances leading to lack of engagement or feel bads, and alternative methods to implement system which might achieve staff goals.

There is a link https://github.com/Arx-Game/arxcode/projects/2 which leads to the discussion of prestige changes, I think? So people are discussing prestige elements.

TLDR - I think runs of a command are misleading in terms of what engagement really is. Some commands are the culmination of RP, choices, and other command runs and even though there are less model coderuns doesn't mean the engagement to reach that coderun was not high.

Per engagement

Praise is something everyone has and despite the # it still sends a little message you praised them and you can leave a message. It's a low cost way (1 ap) to show your support, favor, encouragement, whatever to someone. My praises regularly produce 10 per and I still use them every week because of the 'feel goods' they give to the receiver.

Haggle is an underutilized and misunderstood system. I would also expect it to have less coderuns than praise/work because you need a resource to engage with it. +work and praise generate something. Haggle converts 1 resource into another and costs AP.

Modeling now requires groups to be efficient but beyond that I do not believe 1 coderun of modeling represents low engagement. A single coderun of modeling for even a single outfit could represent 3+ craft commands and a +event to attend or organic large scene to crash. If we're looking at higher end modelers it appears a lot of them involve crafters so for Sabella's cane that was haggles for materials, crafts for creation, probably RP scenes to discuss the design, possibly refines. Getting the money maybe Sabella has that kind of scratch laying around, maybe Josephine did it pro bono but I would ASSUME some +works were done for resources to sell off. Long story short I believe model coderuns represent more engagement than just 10 coderuns were done vs 100 haggles vs 1000 praises vs 10000 works.

+work makes the world go around. @actions use resources, investigations use resources, resources can be sold, econ can be used to get materials. I pay my proteges 30 writs a week now just because it allows me to on paper pay them more than my ducal lord stipend allows. Arguably I think +work was the best change but that low clout commoners get kind of shafted. It would be nice if you allowed commoners to use their patrons to assist their rolls which would remove the 'need' for the protege to be the clout provided. Now high clout patrons of all ranks can be sought out.

Example lets say Preston was protege'd to Edain. Well Edain wants to support the Faith he's the Oathlands High Lord so when Preston goes around seeking commitments of favors to help rebuild the templars why can't the fact he's Edain's protege help HIS work rolls?

I'd be super interested in how staff envisions AP sharing/transfer/selling to come back to the game. The majority of abusable and/or unbalanced loops are impossible to create without bringing in AP from off character so how they intend to add that back in would have a pretty significant impact on prestige and other systems like haggling (which no longer sources prestige as a primary factor).

@aerianyx

I could see a variation of the Darkest Dungeon approach to camping being applied. You have to specifically bring the supplies to make camp and when you do there is a % chance of being attacked when you break camp. Would fulfill a lot of the ideas you're proposing.