Best posts made by Lain

@surreality said in RL Anger:

'that's what you do at that age'

Now, I'm not a religious nutter, but I will say in defense of Confirmation that I think rites of passage are important in culture. They're central to a people's way of life. Moderate religious people perform the rites of passage, and just the rites in general, do so with a sense of reverence, and make a point to display that they grok the emotional gravitas of these traditions, but otherwise don't obsess over them too much.

I think "Confirmation" is one of the least bad things that a religious institution can impose on its young members, frankly. To normal people who don't overthink this sort of thing, it's just a step toward becoming an adult as perceived by your community.

@Thenomain said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lain

You may be running into an interesting community conceit: That we RP for immersion. Tabletops, as we know, RP for many reasons but mostly for sitting around playing a game.

I'd like to hear how your friends would do in a LARP or other situation where personal actions are more to the fore, and not 'I lie <clatter of dice> and win!'

Except "I lie <clatter of dice>" is about as immersive as "I cook the meth <clatter of dice>" or "I fortify the Sanctum <clatter of dice>" or "I cast magic missile against the goblin <clatter of dice>."

The conceit isn't just that people play RPGs for the sake of immersion, but specifically that social dice don't count for anything. You'll notice that on WoD games, there's way less objection to people using supernatural abilities to override their autonomy. My character can use Dominate on someone to make them do my bidding because magic. He can shoot that character and make them die without me knowing how to do so. He can cook meth without me knowing how to do so, either.

So in conclusion, it's not about autonomy, it's not about believability, it's not about immersion, and it's not about suspension of disbelief, it's about "my character is above the bullshit, just like me!"

@Thenomain said in RL Anger:

@Lain said in RL Anger:

Should we be policing people's political views?

Oh god yes please. "Your political view is without merit and based on nothing more than what you were told to believe. You are out of the voting pool until you can show a minimum national standard of independent thought."

I am obviously kidding but wishing that I didn't have to.

"You have expressed views that contradict my party's line. Your voter license application has been denied. Also your employer, university, and landlord have been informed of your wrongthink."

@faraday said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

Except "I lie <clatter of dice>" is about as immersive as "I cook the meth <clatter of dice>" or "I fortify the Sanctum <clatter of dice>" or "I cast magic missile against the goblin <clatter of dice>."

I think you're missing the point that some of us are saying that "I cook the meth" is no more satisfactory than "I lie" or "I treat the patient" or "I fight Bob". We come for immersion. We come for story. We expect some measure of detail in poses -- all poses. Social skills are a little different because they're harder to fake. Not everyone has a BS-o-meter tuned for medical stuff or meth cooking, but everyone has a BS-o-meter tuned for socialization, and socialization comes up literally all the time.

It's fine to have a different point of view. Really it is. It's not okay to dismiss the alternative as some form of "I just want my character to be immune to social stuff" powerplaying just because you don't understand and/or agree with it. That's insulting and dismissive. Lots of games do this successfully. It's not some alien concept that's never been tried.

This is you telling me not to be insulting and dismissive.

@faraday

LOL. I'm not even going to respond to that one.

This is you being insulting and dismissive.

If you want me to not be insulting and dismissive to you, you're going to have to refrain from being insulting and dismissive to me.

Now. Onto your point: social skills aren't harder to fake. Especially if you keep it in somewhat vague terms: "Her eyes glaze over and her lower lip starts trembling. Something about this seems so innocent and helpless." There. This pose can be used for basically any plea of helplessness. Just because you, faraday, might be able to call these crocodile tears for what they are OOC does not, in fact, mean that a character will. People fall for really obvious manipulative ploys IRL all the time. If you don't believe me, go to any real life setting where people interact with each other regularly. If you don't bury your face in your palms at least once a day because you catch some third party making a BS manipulation/powerplay/whatever on another third party and you notice it but the target doesn't, you're autistic as fuck.

That's what is so awful about humans: we're gullible as hell. Most people acquiesce to, if not outright fall for, blatant and obvious lies, deceptions, and hollow threats all the fucking time. We see it in fiction and in real life all the time: people falling for really stupid shit.

We know from this that if anything, especially in the context of an RPG, faking social ability is, if anything, easier, since it's the norm in fiction for otherwise intelligent and capable characters to fall for really stupid shit all the time. It's even more plausible for gullible or weak willed characters to fall for really stupid shit, as well.

You can write off practically all obvious cringe shit from a Cheetos American neckbeard's interpretation of seduction with "there's a certain je ne sais quoi about his character." Whereas, you simply cannot make meth by mixing ammonia and bleach -- at least, not to the best of my knowledge -- because that's just not how chemistry works.

@surreality I switch my major party affiliation based on which primary I want to vote in. Right now I'm registered as a Republican largely on the basis that their primaries appear less rigged. Maybe I'll jump ships again in 2020.

@WTFE said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lotherio said in Eliminating social stats:

To incentivize, I've been pondering Pace, a 24 game (written in 24 hours). Pips are gained and used to supplement skills (descriptors). To gain pips for use later, a primary way is by accepting a loss. Their example has a dashing character takes a fail at flirting, the loss ends with them wearing a red mark on the cheek for a 2 pip loss in that situation. They can now use those two points for a success later.

Fate and Spark both use mechanisms similar to this. Probably loads more, too. This is thinking that dates back to Champions' first edition with their ham-fisted "get points for weaknesses" attempts.

FATE has proven to be fucking fantastic at incentivizing sportsmanlike behavior in the interest of good storytelling. In a WoD setting, I honestly wouldn't mind handing out WP points or even taking a Beat for accepting a humiliating defeat without the MUH AUTONOMY crap.

Taking a Beat in particular makes sense: you learned the hard way. You got owned, like outright, and if that keeps happening, people tend to wise up to how they're getting owned. Either they learn how to not get owned, or they learn skills that allow them to compensate/retaliate for getting owned.

Since we don't know what the dragon's post mortem name is supposed to be, what should we call it?

I propose we call it Blue Eyes White Dragon.

@Arkandel said in Eliminating social stats:

But I really don't think the fix is giving people a reward for using them. Awarding Beats for accepting failures and stepbacks have been part of nWoD MU* for years now and I can't say I've noticed a real difference in the use of social attributes even though arguably there has been one in other areas of those same games.

Part of why I'm reluctant to just throw social stats out is that there isn't much of a basis for one beyond a reactionary/adaptive argument from people. Also, part of why I am reluctant to accept the loss of social stats is because I've consistently played Manip 1 redneck engineer types on nWoD games, and they were always welcome to all the parties and social events in spite of explicitly being weirdos. Female characters showed sexual interest in them. Frankly, it made no sense.

Engineers, and in particular high-aptitude, low-education, rural de facto engineers, are notoriously "creepy" and persona non grata everywhere they go IRL. It makes no sense that qt3.14s would be on their dick and trying to pry into the mysterious stoic philosophy of Jim-Ray the electrician , no matter how high his Crafts/Science skills are.

They keep these crafter characters around because they're useful in real life, but they rarely display real interest in their thoughts, feelings, and opinions, and these RPG's have offered an escape from the deeply-held alienation that this class of person actually deals with.

I've also seen the exact opposite, where high social stat female characters get blown off as FUUCKKENN WHOOAHHHs when they come onto a guy IC because the player has had a lot of TS on other characters, even though by their profile pic alone actual straight men would bend over backwards to buy them a drink, much less nail them.

Basically, I see people playing their characters as way more rational than actual people are, and whether or not you think the "natural ebb and flow" is important, I think imposing a degree of simulationism in the interest of having the story, you know, make some kind of sense, is important. "Highly emotional" characters that make staid, wise decisions whenever the choice counts are lame characters. Gorgeous straight women who can't get a bf are lame characters. Dumbasses who manage to come up with clever, sophisticated methods of engineering away their problems are lame characters.

The prevalence of things like this lead me to believe that the "scene's natural ebb and flow" is way off-kilter, and that there should be at least some measures taken to suppress the PC snowflake plot armor syndrome we're a bit too used to.

@WTFE said in RL Anger:

@Tyche said in RL Anger:

My German teacher in high school was a Russian orthodox nun who managed to escape the Soviet Union where over 250,000 priests and nuns were rounded up and murdered by atheists. Given the track record of atheists in the 20th century, well that ought to turn many a Christian white with fear.

If you were in Soviet Russia you'd have a point. And, indeed, I'd be saying it with you. I'm not a huge fan of capital-A Atheists (like the Oh-So-Rational Trinity: Dawkins, Hitchens, and that closet wannabe Buddhist, Sam Harris) and their approach to dealing with the religious, after all.

You're not, however, and thus you don't. Hence, I'm not.

So what are you distinguishing it by? Nationality? Why don't the actions of Soviet atheists count toward one's valid apprehension toward atheism, exactly?

@ShelBeast but what if someone gets a really good roll on they social dice but writes a really stupid pose!?

How can rollplayers even compete?

@WTFE said in RL Anger:

@Lain said in RL Anger:

So what are you distinguishing it by? Nationality? Why don't the actions of Soviet atheists count toward one's valid apprehension toward atheism, exactly?

Tell me next time you see the Soviet Union suppressing Christians.

(Or, for that matter, the next time you see the Soviet Union at all.)

Currently in Russia it is--again--the Christians who are doing the suppression.

Using this logic, I could not be concerned about the rise of white nationalism and Neo-Nazi stuff like we saw in Charlottesvile, since they're not the ones doing much of the suppressing right now. In fact, they are the ones being suppressed; notice how the Daily Stormer, a semi-satirical Neo-Nazi site, had its domain names revoked on multiple occasions, followed shortly later by Stormfront, a similar site that has been up for over two full decades. There is an active corporate censorship campaign against anything with even the vaguest whiff of nationalism, much less ethnonationalism. Combine this with literal mobs of people who are so hellbent on silencing "Nazis" that they'll call a gay Jew who likes sucking black cocks a Nazi for the vile act of calling progressivism insane. We have CEOs threatening to fire people for voting for Trump. The only thing the Soviets have on us right now in terms of suppression of right wing speech are literal gulags.

If I could only be rationally concerned about the current dominant ideology/religion no matter how bad their history is, then there would be literally no basis at all to be concerned about Nazis. In spite of the outright dystopian approach the American Left has taken to suppressing any speech right of Noam Chomsky, I'm still simultaneously concerned about white nationalist types getting too much influence on the culture/policy of the nation.

Your standard for when one may get concerned is... I think it's a bit shallow and one-dimensional, to be honest.

@deadculture Crafter characters are always where it's at fam

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

@Lain said in RL Anger:

Then you should read the rest of my post. We also have: literal mobs of people rioting in the interest of shutting up anybody right of Noam Chomsky for being a "Nazi," ...

... private citizens. (By the way, I've no love for Chomsky; the guy is a fucking nutjob.)

I'm glad you think that a right wing mob barging into the classroom of a Marxist professor, beating him senseless, and destroying the physical classroom wouldn't qualify as speech suppression because they're "private citizens."

... CEOs of major companies publicly threatening to fire you for voting wrong ...

... private citizens.

I'm glad you think that a conservative CEO firing you for voting Hillary doesn't qualify as speech suppression because they're "private citizens."

... and cities revoking licenses to stage peaceful demonstrations at the last minute for ideological reasons and then sending in the police to shut those demonstrations down.

... which Charlottesville was enjoined from doing, pursuant to a federal court order.

This isn't a refutation of the point. There is an active speech suppression campaign going on from the left wing. Just because there is interference going on from the Feds in some cases doesn't make that reality go away.

Literally the only way the American Left could get worse on free speech is if they were to successfully institute a gulag system. It's atrocious. Frankly, it's worrying. Its like McCarthyism on steroids.

Wait, so it's the American Left that threatened to alter libel laws?

Libel is already illegal.

That argued that corporations should have unlimited donations to political campaigns?

Corporate donations to "private citizens" doesn't preclude anybody else from speaking. It's not speech suppression, and this isn't relevant.

That sought an exception based on religion for corporations to deny equal protection under the laws?

If refusing to hire homosexuals for religious reasons is speech suppression, then I don't see how refusing to hire people for voting wrong is speech suppression.

No, please, do tell.

Modern, white Americans have no idea what suppression or oppression means or is. I'll wager you haven't had an entire branch of your family imprisoned and then killed for trying to read books that were banned by the government.

>white Americans

Says the guy who thinks corporate campaign contributions are speech suppression but revocation of domain names and punitive termination for voting habits aren't. You have no idea what speech suppression is.

But, sure. Go on. Tell me how bad the American Left is, please! Continue.

(Don't get me wrong, the American Left is stupid, naïve, and fascist on a lot of other levels, but this ain't it.)

How is rioting specifically to suppress speech not "fascist" (if by that I assume you mean "authoritarian"), exactly?

As a player, what information do you want and need about a game world to effectively play the game (ex: be able to formulate a character you feel fits the world and knows what the characters should know about it)?

A genre, plus any details about the world that are atypical for that genre. Putting them in bullet points is ideal, with the option to go to another page to read more when it becomes relevant. Wikis are great for this purpose.

Basically, give me broad strokes that get progressively more specific as I delve deeper. The specific information is less relevant than the granularity of it, and that the broadest stuff comes first while the most specific stuff comes last.

As a player, what kind of information do you find gets in your way more than it helps you accomplish this?

Fifty thousand word historical accounts of events from the perspective of an NPC who I will never deal with in game. I should not have to spend an afternoon to find out that it's basically generic fantasy setting, except the elves have blue hair that gives them magic powers this time. You should just come out and say, "It's like an R.A. Salvatore novel except the elves have blue hair that gives them magic powers."

Not the broad strokes, either. Everybody knows you have to cover basic history, basic setting, or include a writeup of what factions are present and what they represent. This is about specifics.

The specifics don't matter, really. What matters most is how they're presented. First and foremost, you should tell your potential players what the fucking point is, i.e., what your setting is fundamentally about, as opposed to every other setting out there; "Arkadia is a fairy tale setting with dark fantasy/horror notes" is way more important to know than "King Leopold XXIV hated coconuts so much that if he smelled coconuts on a suitor for his daughter he'd have them beheaded." You want both in your setting information, but you want to get that latter detail way, way down the line.

Is it important to you, as a player, to have information available that distinguishes 'what locals would know' vs. 'what out of towners/new arrivals' would know?

Depends on if you're going to be running the game exclusively in one city or locale.