Best posts made by Killer Klown

I tend to be a rather symbiotic roleplayer - in that I tend to pose more and in more detail when other people in the scene do the same. This isn't a slam against anyone, and in truth I don't intend to do it - it's just something that happens. I might kick out a long, detailed, and multi-paragraphed intro, but if people respond with two or three lines each over the course of several rounds, my own poses will get shorter and shorter because I simply run out of things to say or hook into.

Conversely, my poses get longer and more detailed if the people I'm with do the same. Even if half of it is just meta fluff, I'd end up responding in kind because there's just that much more to actually respond to.

With regards to content, the same kind of style applies. I used to be the kind of player that would write up pages and pages of backstory - but I gradually withdrew from that until, now, I tend to just focus on question-and-answer type formats and leave the actual story nebulous; largely because of the years and years of experience that written backgrounds almost never get incorporated, or even mentioned IC. I know specific story beats, but actual details only get filled in if/when they come up IC. I've actually found that to be better for me as well, since it incorporates the context of the scene that the idea is brought up into how the character reacted to the situation.

Always, as a player or GM, plan to fail forward. This is probably the single most important thing I learned from the Wrath and Glory rules - and I cannot say enough how awesome that system is <even if you're not into 40k, the mechanics rock>. A failure is not a failure. It shouldn't stonewall or stop the scene until the players find a solution to the problem , or engineer a way around the problem. Failures should have consequences that go beyond everyone throwing dice at the issue until someone makes it- but they should be consequences in game; and they still can be used to move the story forward albeit not in the way the players might expect and would likely make the journey onward a bit more difficult.
I've seen too many games break because the players either can't figure out something, or they just can't make the roll necessary to do it in-character. I've also seen too many plots hinge on a character making a critical roll - and if they don't, they miss out on a crucial piece of information and cannot move forward, or they just keep rolling until they eventually make it. Some things don't get a retry. Some things logically shouldn't get a retry; but that doesn't mean they should be a hard stop.

Fear Me!

Yes, he did this to himself. Then did it to himself again after I rescued him.

Hello. Is the lady of the house in? Could I interest you in a lovely new vacuum cleaner?

I guess I've responded to enough of these that I should probably try and remember who the hell I was.

Crypt - Corak, Locke (Werewolf, not the kid), one or two other minor ones
Nightscape/Necropolis - Shen, Blake (Aka Slate, Aka ... whoever the hell else he turned into)
Crypt 2/Valley of the Damned - Colwyn
Chivalry (Post-apoc version) - Astynax (leonine mutant thing)
CrystalMush - Elrick, Solian, Evan, Damien, Berem, couple of others whos names escape me.

Manhattan by Moonlight - Jeremy (Bastet); Bullwinkle (Build Staff)
Cajun Nights - Jin
Monaco - Cody (Virtual Adept)
Mercyground - Ethan (Homid Silver Fang Ahroun); Some staffer whos name I forgot.
GarouMUSH - Jeremiah (Metis Ronin Galliard), Gunnar (Homid Get Theu... Godi)
Guilded Promises/Due Rewards - Thorne (Homid Get Ahroun), Dominic (Giovanni), Lion-o (Staff - the one that made me swear off staffing permanently)
Paris - Blaine (Homid Khan)
Pacifica - Some Keui-Jin; either Takeda or Kagero
Metro - Jaegar (Simba), Some other Keui-jin; whichever name I didn't use at Pacifica
Haunted Memories - Christian (Mastigos Guardian of the Veil; was there for a couple of months when the game opened)
Darkwater - Adam, Kane
The Reach - Kier, Rohan, Aramis, Cyrus (Roth), Vale, Elias, Riggs
NYC - ... Mage, Shadowname Vidocq (Mastigos Guardian of the Veil, 11th Question; forget his real name), Gideon
Reno 1- Thorne, Gideon
BITN - Cade
Eldritch - The Price (Cover was Grayson, I think)

Few other places, but I don't remember the character names. Few other characters that I don't remember the names of the places they went to:
Iain - Gwydion Sidhe turned Ailil (Some place that had a lot of drama with faestaff, and made me one of my best friends online ever - but I keep forgetting the name of the joint)
Ridley - Scatach Sidhe (I think this might've been Pandemonium)
Lazarus (Lasombra - some place set in Hawaii)
Locke (Giant City Gangrel; recent V20 game set in Florida who's name escapes me at the moment)
Brett - Ratkin Engineer (Name began with P. Or T. Or something. Think it was set in Boston? I don't know anymore. I barely remember my 20s)
Cassius - Nosferatu, failed proto-gargoyle looking thing that mainly quoted Shakespear. (Denver? Something?)
There's probably more; likely they'll come to me. Eventually.

Currently:
Fallcoast - Jericho, Shen, Domhnall
Reno 2 - Thorne, Dalton
Fates Harvest - Ridley

Have characters on Fear and Loathing and Fallen World, but I never figured out how to get them off the ground.
(Edit) - added staffalts that I remember.
EditEdit - fixed the name of a place I misremembered

Yeah. Funny story about that. When I first started dating my eventual-wife, and was more heavily into the goth scene, we once went out to a club with her wearing a leash that she had clipped to one of my belt loops.

Her mom saw us.
I said, without missing a beat, that she made a perfect fashion accessory.
Her mom thought it was hilariously adorable.

So, yeah. Not entirely on topic - but, leashes.

Cinnamon toast (dense, thick sliced bread, usually - Jamaican hardo bread is the best for this)
Tater Tots
Ramen

The biggest argument I tend to see is that there's no real restriction on using physical stats against other pcs - like you could beat someone into submission if you were stronger, but couldn't use Charisma/Presence/whatever to convince them to submit.

It might be tired, but I do think it's valid. Social stats and skills don't cost any less than physical ones, so they should at least have a comparable effect. I suppose there's a difference between 'hard' and 'soft' social stats - hard ones, like intimidate or subterfuge (in terms of lying), could actually change the flow of rp because you're effectively beating someone with a stat stick just as if you were doing so with a real stick. 'Soft' ones like persuasion or socialize are fuzzier; you're not so much forcing an issue as adjusting the flow of the scene. I'd equate it to the way Diplomacy worked in D&D 3; making the roll would not take an enemy and make them into your minion, but it would improve their general reaction towards you (They might go from outright hostile to at least willing to listen to what you have to say - even if they're under no obligation to take action).
The problem is, that's extremely hard to represent in a MU setting - especially if the person with the social stats misrepresents it or misunderstands how they work himself. The other problem as I see it is ,if you reduce the application of social stats (Even on a passive level) it likewise reduces the attraction to play social based characters when the points could be better or more efficiently spent elsewhere - and I'm not talking just about the attributes and abilities, but also all the merits that are built around those statistics.

@ganymede I speak this language well; also have another that I tend to use with a great deal of frequency <in certain variations>

'If I may ...' --> Listen up you primitive screwheads,

@flitcraft It really doesn't, though. Gnosis caps Arcana, but it's the only Power stat that does so for powers. A Primal Urge 1 Werewolf or Blood Purity 1 Vampire can still buy every level of Gift/Discipline they want; though the Power Stats do serve as requisites for some of the higher end merits. Conversely, both the max level of Arcana and the number of different Arcana you can have are limited by Gnosis on the low end.
On top of that, it also governs the pool you have to draw from and the maximum amount of pips you can draw per round - which has become fairly standardized in 2e. On that it's a level playing field.
Where it most counts is in terms of skills and stats; having a power stat higher than 5 means you can buy stats and skills at higher than 5, and allowing that for one group while categorically denying it to another is unfair. The argument that 'mages can boost their stats' doesn't hold anymore either, since
A> Physical disciplines now passively increase Strength or Stamina by their rating (And Dex, if you go for that obscure bloodline that has it) - that's without having to spend or activate anything.
B> Werewolves have gifts that also increase stats, on top of the stats that they get from shapeshifting.
Further, Gnosis still limits the amount of spells a mage can have active at any given time. The symmetry would be limiting a vampire to only a certain number of Disciplines active <both passively and used directly against someone> or the number of Gifts they can have up at any given time - neither of which is a rule that exists. If anything, Mages depend on their Gnosis far more than the other supers depend on their respective power stats, so if you hobble it while not doing the same for the rest you might as well just not have Mage there to begin with.

tl;dr Edit - Mages start off not being able to do a lot of things that other supers can do right off the bat; Gnosis helps them overcome that restriction before it starts giving them any real bonuses.

So, yeah. I've been considering a few things - some of which have already been mentioned:
***=Stuff and things and whatnot***

I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but it seems like the idea of multi-sphere games tend to do more harm than good when it comes to activity. Some of the most successful or active games I can think of over the last twenty years or so focused on one sphere <not counting Mortal or Mortal+>. I know people want to play all the things, but that puts a pretty huge burden on staff - they need to know the rules, have the code in place, and have storytellers available for however many spheres are being supported. In the event of cross-sphere stories, you need to have both a staffer that knows all the spheres involved running the scene, and have the scene set up in such a way where one sphere won't tromp all over what would be a decent challenge for others.
And that's assuming you get the spheres willing, and have a reason, to interact in the first place. A multisphere game where every one of the spheres is only involved in their own thing isn't a multisphere game, it's multiple games running on the same site.
I guess, ideally, what I would prefer seeing is a game that focuses on one sphere and builds a solid plot and foundation; then, if the interest and support is there, branch out to another sphere. Staffers as a whole are fewer and further between, and it seems that straight up storytelling staffers are even rarer. That's a finite resource, and trying to spread it out over what basically amounts to multiple games at the same time only seems to result in burnout, high turnover, and no one getting the amount of attention they need.

His name is Dyson, because he is round and rolls about and picks up stuff. He is currently in jail because his street name is 'DontEatThat'

@Lisse24 said in Carnival Row:

@Ghost I have not seen the TV show so I may be misinterpreting your post, but it seems like you solve these issues by focusing on the fae characters. So it is not another PC that is oppressing yours or acting racist and no one has any excuse to allow that to bleed OOC.

On the contrary, it would be you and a group of your friends fighting the machine, which, if you take a glance at my past characters has always been a concept that's interested me.

One of the subplot points in the show is a fae inserting himself into (heh. Inserting himself into...) the upper class human society; and there are other examples of not just the friction between the classes, but what happens when one side or the other crosses that boundary.

Still, I don't think this will work as a MU. It's entirely too character-centric. It's the sort of story where just about everyone who gets named onscreen has some - secret or not - connection to everyone else who gets named on screen; and much of the story is tied up or at least ancillary to their specific interactions and relationships. In my experience that doesn't really work when it comes to game plots.

Missed one:
UbiSoft - Can you see those mountains?
You are now leaving the designated mission area.

I'd insert that Michael Jackson-eating-popcorn gif, but I figure given the ongoing news about him and all it might be in bad taste.

Battletech.
Just. Battletech. I cannot say enough about Battletech. Maybe it has something to do with it being my first foray into games that didn't involve things like Monopoly or checkers, or that my friends and I growing up got so hardcore into the thing that we set up a 10x10 foot playing field (using Battleforce maps laid over by sheets of plexiglass) to have four on four company battles that lasted the better part of a weekend, or that I've just been totally inundated in everything having to do with the franchise (including all the nonsense about the Unseen and whatnot) from 1st Edition Battledroids up until Fasa decided to stop making games... but I freaking love this iteration of it. There are a number of differences from what I remember (so I'm not sure if they had to do with changes in the actual rules, or just kludges for video game balance - like the limiting of not just critical spaces or weapon types, but total number of weapons per type per location) and there's one or two things I did find annoying (like how punishing Heat can be - not just shutting down or penalizing your mech, but also doing more damage to it than most enemies could ever hope to do in an alpha strike) But ... yeah. Battletech. I kickstarted it. I have the freaking jacket; and thankfully, the game delivers. If you're into turn-based strategy, and looking for something that isn't X-Com (As one review put it, the difference here is that, in X-com, your soldiers die if they get hit too much - while mechs can lose an arm or torso segment and not really notice) I'd definitely recommend it.

The other inherent difference is that in TT there's always a ST there to adjudicate and to tell a player if they're being an idiot. That's not the case on a MU, where it's usually left to one person's interpretation of the rule vs another persons.

Interesting idea, but I can see a couple of problems with it on first blush:
1> You're inevitably going to reach a point where all of the xp a person earns during a month is going to have to be thrown at the tax just to maintain their sheet as it is. At some point, if the person is active and gaining additional xp above the weekly dole, their sheet might push past that point so they're going to have to finagle more and more points just to keep things where they are; that doesn't strike me as a particuliarly good way of doing business.
2> RL Happens. Some times of year, for myself and many people I know, are busier than others. People go on vacation, crap happens that takes you away from the game or messes with your schedule. Maybe you just live in an inconvenient time zone - but if you're not able to make events or things that allow for higher xp-per-week, you'll basically be locked into a tier lower than everyone else through no fault of your own. If you're usually active but have a bad month, you stand to lose a tremendous amount of xp - as in, it would take several months to regain what it took only a couple of weeks to lose.
3> This really screws prerequisite stats all to hell. What happens if you miss something and your Resolve drops too low to use Martial Arts? Or what happens if you lose points on a Merit that's Chargen only?

Just a few devil's advocate things. I've always been a strong supporter of the idea that if you earn/are awarded the xp, it's yours to do with as you please. I've even been semi-vocal about requiring justifications for Renown in Werewolf these days (particularly if nothing else in the game requires justifications) - so I'd likely never play at a game that utilizes this kind of system.

Indeed. At some point, all problems can be solved by a properly accelerated blunt instrument.