Posts made by Lisse24

@Ganymede I'd argue that in a MU, providing directions on how to navigate the game and use its systems is part of UX.

@Ganymede I get what she's saying. I seldom ever get equipment on CoD MUs because staff rarely ever writes up the process to do so. I'm often frustrated on MUs in the disconnect between what you're expected to know to do and what's explained to you. MUs are not user friendly, not because telnet (although that to), but just because they don't tell you basic things and almost always assume some level of base knowledge, instead of assuming no base knowledge.

The whole reason I play WoD/CoD games is because I wanna play generic urban fantasy and its not there.

That being said, I don't care what system you use as long as it's generally easy to learn. I don't have the time or intricacies to pour over a new system if it's going to be exceptionally fiddly.

More important than the system, I think you should really, really, really try for an original themed game. If you're going with a well-known property, you'll find that people coming into the game will have their own preconceived notions on how things should and shouldn't work and may well ignore your theme files. You'll also be hemmed in by the canon that the property has established in their own products, which will have elements that do not work in a MU environment.

@Misadventure said in Good Political Game Design:

Might often makes right RL. However, look at what ELSE matters, what the costs are, the risks. Make those IMPORTANT. Your people may not like the draft, so sure you roll over two neighbors then find your family executed by an unhappy military. Maybe you can't stay friends and get trade going if you are a dick all the time.

Make this stuff matter, or all you get is play around what you DO acknowledge. Like how people ignore social stats in RPGs, no teeth, no one cares about it.

Right. The point is not to prioritize military over everything else, the point is that if you don't have dynamic politics and diffuse resources there's nothing to politick over, and people will always agree.

Also, if there's not a real possibility that the person on top can lose their position if the people under them are unhappy, the person on top is never going to work that hard at keeping that position and the people under him will focus on something other than politicking. That's fine in a lot of games, but if you're aiming for a political game, that's not really what you want.

The fact that you can't post on female-oriented subreddits without drawing creepers, and the fact that Reddit admins aren't doing anything about the creepers.

https://www.reddit.com/r/ABraThatFits/comments/6f9bta/mod_post_ublahblah2018_is_a_creep_that_is_sending/

@bored said in Good Political Game Design:

I keep wanting to make a permanent version of this I can link to, but I've brought it up in a couple places: L&L games tend to hit the trap of doing a very structured, CK2-like concept of feudalism, where dukes rule counts and counts rule barons or lords etc. Or Clan Leaders rule irrelevant noble families that no one cared about at all (Firan). Almost inevitably, the power of these figures is exponential moving up the hierarchy.

This is both wrong from even the slightest look at history, and stupid from a play design perspective. You want your primary actors to be at parity. Now, maybe it's fine to have only your Dukes etc sitting at the main council (and, see above, I'm in favor of a primary council-like entity that probably maxes out at around 10 people), but all the lesser lords should have pretty much comparable resources, so that their loyalty and assistance is something you rely on, not something you demand.

And to date, basically every L&L game ever gets a big fat F on this one.

People who don't know history always forget how weak monarchies were before Absolutism.

Anyway, right now, this is how Arx is set up, too. And like every other L&L game, politics has been hoarded in the hands of a few. HOWEVER, Arx has Dominion coming in and I'm really interested to see how that will change things on that game. Already, houses can improve their incomes. What happens when a Duchy has control of a military larger than their lord? The cynical side of me says that peer pressure to be "nice" will keep everything static, but I'm really hopeful that a Duke/Duchess at some point decides to pay less taxes, because what's the ruling family going to do?

Building off of what @Pyrephox began. I think there are a few things that are left out:

First, a diffuse power structure. This is what most people are getting at with resources. If the resources are spread out, than no one holds all the power.

Second, the power structure needs to be dynamic and changeable. In too many games that spout being political, including most L&L games, it's really, really hard to change who is in power. Firan was horrible at this, especially in later years. The clan leaders held all the cards and more minor nobles didn't really have much to bring to the table. Politicking was limited to between clans, meaning that 95% of the game population was excluded from that game play. Was it possible to take over a clan? Sure. It happened a few times, but not nearly often enough to make an interesting political game. Status in WoD works a bit better, for a model of a political game, but you need to make rising in Status powerful enough that it's something to do, and just like in real life, it needs to be really hard to stay at the top.

Aaaannnnyyyone wanna risk ending up in a ball on the floor and talk Leftovers?

I had some time this week, and so transferred a lot of my ideas from a half-formed disorganized gdoc, to a half-formed, somewhat better organized wiki.

Still looking for people interested in planning/staffing, especially in need of a coder.

http://antilliamux.wikidot.com/start

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

That said, the XP situation is crazy. I mean, that's been known (and mentioned, even in this thread, I think) for months. Some people regularly get 30/40+ XP a week, and maximize it with use of the very generous teaching system, and I know several characters with 5+ skills at 5 (the highest you can go without being actively supernatural in ability) and 3+ stats at 5.

I'd be lying if I said that this perception and my own perception that I just didn't have the time/desire to keep up, wasn't a major factor in my leaving. It's really disheartening to log in and, week after week, see people getting massive XP gains, while knowing that I'll never be able to do that.

@Roz @Sparks I'll miss you guys, too!

@Jaded Yeah, I was a wee bit fond of her, too

Updated to reflect rostering Lydia

@Thenomain said in Airplane games:

Have you played any of Telltale Games' The Walking Dead? It's available on iOS. Pre-download and play through the entirety of Season 1. Try not to cry. I dare you.

Came here to say this. I think there's versions for laptops, too, although I played on my iPad.

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

There's a difference between 'The NPCs say my scandalous vomit-green dress is hotter than yours' and 'I rolled the dice now tell me about your ties to the demonic horde while we prep the executioner's blade, traitor'.

No one has argued for either of those things. The first is boring, the second robs a player of their autonomy. However, as @Sparks pointed out, there's a more indepth conversation about social combat in another thread.

@Salty-Secrets What about if characters got a significant bonus in resisting attempts that go against the heart of their character.

I'm working on a system where each character in CG gets to choose three characteristics that are used to define their character. So, one character may choose 'Refined,' 'Quick-witted,' and 'Sly.' Now, obviously, if someone tried to make that character laugh by starting a food fight, that character isn't going to be down with that. So, when resisting the attempt, the character gets a bonus. The same thing would work if a female character tried to hit on a gay guy, etc.

I'm a firm believer that the core aspect of any character should be respected, and I get that a lot of players fear that will be denied them with social combat, but I'm not convinced that it has to be that way. I think we can recognize a players autonomy AND encourage social characters to use their skills if we set up the right system. Like others in the thread, I'm not sure that basing it on physical combat is the right system.

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

I think a social combat system on Arx could really benefit a lot of PRP GMs, and even staff GM'ing too, and make those manipulation dice just as potentially useful as medium wpn is.

Yeah, right now, Arx seems really gunshy about letting talkers do their thing. Last night, I sat in a meeting and laid out a potential diplomatic path to begin to work on a problem. It was ignored in favor of sending out more scouts and just keeping eyes open. I don't know all the solutions to this, but I am pretty sure that having a defined system will help with getting characters to view that option as just as legitimate.

I think the closest to what is being described here is the "moves" that RfK had. Social combat had a list of defined "moves" that could be used in social combat and, if I recall, they were similar to the ones that you describe. Each move had it's own attacking and defending roll and its own measure of success. Upon success, each move imposed a condition.

It's important to note that people are so gun shy of social combat that the system was very rarely used. However, one of the greatest scenes I had on that game was arguing with AJ in Walmart using that system.

I think you'd want to use a very simplified system at first. I also think that something like conditions that provide the loser with two options is important to the success of social combat, I fear that if the end result is "you must tell the secret," people will just ignore the system. However, if the end result is "You may tell the secret or you may take a -1 to all social encounters for the next month" people will complain about the results less because they are still maintaining control over their character.

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

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

@Pandora How do you deal with people ignoring social skills, since they no longer do anything, and putting all of their XP into physical skills?

Social skills shouldn't be the equivalent of font-boxing. If you're cunning, you should be able to get people to believe things that aren't true. Make it a system of extra-powerful gossip, rumors that won't die, slandering your opponents to the NPCs effectively in plots. If you're charming, you can accomplish the same thing without lies, sway NPCs to your side in plots. Etc. and so on.

I remember when Arx was billed as a PvE game, not PvP; every character skill shouldn't be a way to ruin/kill someone's story or character. I got grief for simply not being ICly nice to someone that was slandering my character all over the city in a bid for power then crying to staff that I was a bully when I didn't cave to his demands. Now you lot think Arx staff is going to support your turning social skills into more methods of fucking with each other? Get a grip, and by a grip I mean learn to nicely hold hands tightly, because that's all you're really going to be able to do with other PCs if you don't want to pick up a sword. They've worked hard to give you enemies to fight against, why do you have to measure your dick social stats against each other?

I don't think your tone is particularly helpful in getting your point across. However, if your point is that social combat is not something that was included in the original vision of the game, I think you're mistaken. If I recall correctly, Hellfrog has spoken multiple times about getting a social combat system in. There's even been talk of finding ways to weave fashion into it as a way to give bonuses and such. I know the game was advertised as a PvE game and this seems against the spirit of such, but I thought we'd concluded a while ago that it really is PvP.

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

@Seraphim73

If physical situations can end a character, why not social situations? Is it different if the cut comes from a knife or a tongue?

Because in physical situations, losing a character can be chalked up to bad roles. A few more successes on a defense and you could have gotten out of it! In a social situation, because we're unwilling to let the dice stand alone and because of the myriad of ways to approach the social situation, if you lose it's because of your choices. And if the opposing character has more sway then you and you don't really have a choice? It stings all the more.

In fact, I have lost a character in a social/political situation, and when it was over, a staffer sat me down and told me that it was because I RPed wrong, and seemed to hint that if I had just worded one part of one pose differently everything would have gone differently. I still count that as the worst player-staff interaction that I have ever had.

All that being said, can we spin this discussion off into another thread, because I definitely have thoughts on how to make social combat meaningful. Mainly, I think CoD is on the right track with conditions. You get through a chars defense, and you get to slap a condition on them. That condition gives them a certain penalty/bonus/effect for a significant amount of time, but can also be resolved by playing into the initiating characters hand.

In that situation, no one is robbed of their choice or their autonomy, because social defenses have to be broken before the condition is set, it's unlikely that your character can be overwhelmed/co-opted in a single scene. However, at the same time, ignoring my character's dice and my character's roll is not something that is acceptable.

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

Recently I have been wondering if making the social sphere work like the physical sphere is ineffective. Instead of having social combat, social stats should give access to more resources that can be used to convince others to work with them. In Arx's case, economic, social, and military resources and more support points to be used for tasks would be these resources.

This might work. In general, I think Arx needs to do a bit more work to involve social characters more. I know some of that is due to the player base choosing to ignore possible diplomatic solutions to problems in Plot, however it does feel that unless you mix your social skills with investigative/intellectual skills or occult/supernatural skills, you don't really have a meaningful way to contribute.

@A.-Meowley My general rule of thumb is that I try to respond to one thing/player/group and to offer one new thing. If I'm attempting to be subtle, I'll offer a subtle hook and a blatant hook and let the player choose which. I also adjust my pose size closer to the average pose size of the room. If everyone's posing pages, I'll pose a little under a page. If they're doing paragraphs, I do a paragraph.