Posts made by Lain

@ShelBeast I don't use social dice against player characters very often with the exception of Subterfuge and Intimidate. Especially Subterfuge. The reason for this is so that the dice say that they got fooled; "no, your character doesn't 'just have a hunch.'"

They don't know. They got bamboozled. They think that something that isn't true, is. Period.

And if said character behaves in a way that's inconsistent with them being BSed -- like suddenly and conveniently taking every precaution to preclude Thing That Didn't Happen from hurting them, as an example -- then I can call them on metagaming and basically have it all retconned. Full stop. There should probably also be some disciplinary action taken, like a loss of experience points or something.

Failing that, my character can have a convenient hunch of his own about their character undermining him, and PK them over it using highly pedantic readings of the combat rules to guarantee my victory.

You should bear in mind that I only did this when the tone of the game was already a bit sour. I don't play on games that have a sour taste anymore, so I wouldn't use social dice on player characters. But if you insist on playing in a game where some of the players are OOC out of line and are bringing that into their IC behavior, social dice are a fantastic RP enforcement tool that should not be ignored.

@ShelBeast Exactly.

Just imagine if it was acceptable in this hobby to say "your emote about shooting my character was retarded and also betrays your lack of firearms knowledge; what you just did would make the gun jam. Therefore it does just that and you deal my character 0 damage in spite of your eight successes."

Or

" If you reject my emote where I shoot your character in the head and therefore likely kill them just because I failed to get even a single success then you're not acknowledging my creativity as a writer and are just being a butthurt rollplayer."

Just imagine if this psychology about social rolls got applied to anything else.

@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?

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.

@Ganymede said in Eliminating social stats:

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

B-but my character would never fall for that! She's above the bullshit, just like me!

You could provide a reward to characters that use social combat, only to have the targets refuse to comply based on agency. If in nWoD 2E, give them a Beat.

You could provide a reward to characters who give in without a roll, or where they knowingly accept a negative consequence as a result of going along with the desired result. Give them a Beat.

Cap the beats, and people will still play the social combat game.

Lots of ways to make it work for as many people as possible.

I think the players who bitch about muh agency would have such a high time preference that they'd pass on the Beats just to pout about how their character would totally respond to successful intimidation with violence instead of just putting their head down. They think about nothing but right now.

@Jennkryst said in Eliminating social stats:

How many movies have you watched where... Bond picks someone up with the cheesiest one-liner you've ever heard? Luke Cage asks if folks want coffee. Just stare at a person and go 'No, don't fall for that'... but they do?
I GIVE TO YOU SOCIAL COMBAT.

B-but my character would never fall for that! She's above the bullshit, just like me!

@Misadventure 4chan is actually starting to lose some steam. It's dispersing into lots of little outposts, other chan sites, that run on the same software but have different administrators.

I don't mind that they got rid of Littlefinger, but it was a bit anticlimactic for my liking. Also the way he crumpled and begged like a bitch seemed way out of character.

Also Littlefinger was a fun wildcard. He did the job well.

Which side will you be on? :^)

I'm mad and worried that America could go through a second civil war, that when that happens it'll get desperate enough to conscript even my fat ass, and that I'll either die from this war or I'll come back from it fully uncivilized due to a combination of shell shock and just being plain sick of this shit existence.

I'm mad at myself because I can't tell if I'm just being neurotic with this concern.

@Thenomain said in RL things I love:

Walmart

I buy cheap shit at Walmart all the time, man. They sell all kinds of things for practically nothing. Since my tax dollars subsidize them indirectly anyway, I might as well take advantage of their artificially low prices.

I generally just want to see some new angle on things in fiction. You only get that so often. Some weird shit, like House of Leaves. When they break the rules, but in a clever way. It's why, when mockumentaries were still new, I was captivated; because I had not seen one yet.

I'm sick of just absorbing characterization and such. It's trite.

@Tinuviel said in RL Anger:

@Lain Then the voting should be either entirely open, or entirely closed. If you want 'the people' to pick your candidate, it's no longer an internal affair. if you want only those who are members of your party to pick your candidate, then you don't need a song and dance number. Hand out an information packet and get the members to vote.

They don't want "the people" to pick their nominee. They want their party members to pick their nominee. And in the case of the Democrats, not even that. They want their "superdelegates" (VIPs) to pick their nominee, while allowing their rank and file to have some input. Now that, I find, stupid.

@Sunny I think it makes sense that in order to vote in an organization's internal affairs -- who they nominate -- one would need to be a member of said organization. I don't see how that's "stupid." Primaries are not the general election, just a nomination selection process.

@Tinuviel What is your nationality?

@Tinuviel They are secret. People vote across party lines all the time. @Thenomain is a Republican for the purpose of fucking with their primaries, as he said, i.e., trolling them by voting for unelectable candidates. I vote for different parties all the time.

My registered party affiliation means basically nothing. It's a step below metadata, at least in terms of heuristic for guessing who I vote for. And most people aren't even politically active; they abstain. The people who vote, especially in local elections, generally have a deeper understanding of the structures and play it like a big game.

@Tinuviel said in RL Anger:

@Lain It's how your country works. It's still fucking stupid.

Honestly, I don't think the specifics of America's representative democracy are the actual cause of our problems. America's issues come more from its culture than from its political structure. People have this very top-down view of societies, like if you put the right policies and structures on the books then things will magically right themselves.

That's so far from the truth that it hurts.

@Tinuviel said in RL Anger:

@Lain That is an incredibly fucking stupid thing to require.

Well, that's nice that you think that, but it is how the country works, so if you want to navigate our political structure, registering under one of the two major political parties gives one more say-so than registering as an independent. (This varies by State, and we've got fifty of them)

At this juncture in America, it's easier for a tangent political faction to capture an existing political party than it is for a new political party to supplant one of the dominant ones. Hence Sanders and Trump.

@WTFE said in RL Anger:

WHY THE FLYING FUCK WOULD YOU REGISTER YOUR POLITICAL AFFILIATIONS!?

To vote in their primaries.

Dune or 40k