Posts made by Lisse24

@tek Ugh, that and endo? I feelz for you.

@tek I have PCOS, which literally makes it near impossible to lose weight. The average calorie deficit needed to lose weight on this disease is 800 cals/day (yes there have been studies). Despite that, while I'm pudgy, I've managed to stay under 150 and maintain good blood pressure by working my tail off. At 4'11, this makes me a bit pudgy - pudgy, but not terribly obese. Yet, what do I hear every time I get sick and go to the doctor? Well, if I'd just lose weight...

@Arkandel I want to make clear that I think plot is extremely important. I just think the PRP/+event system is a terrible way to run plot.

In my experience, PRPs/+events are disconnected, isolated events that have no connection to what my character has done in the past or what my character will do in the future. There is little attempt to wrap things into the broader sphere or my character's development. Players pick them up and drop them with little care or consequence. Maybe yours are different, I dunno. Can't say that I've ever been on one of mine, but the strength that MU's have over TT's is the ability to tell a long, sustained character driven story. To that end, if a +event/PRP is a nice way to spend an evening if I have absolutely nothing else to do, but I'd much rather be chewing down on some nice, meaty plot goodness.

I also have a very specific opinion about pacing. In that I like things to be slow. I want to find out a little bit of info, have a week (or two!) to RP that thing to death and make decision. Then act, find out new plot info, and RP that thing out. Bonus points if the plot-RP leaves some effect on my char for the between down-time.

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

If there's a strict pose order in a big scene and people have to save all of their reactions for one pose, you end up with the giant "I have to respond to everyone" pose. I think KQ is saying that if people were more free to respond to things as they come, it would be easier and read more naturally.

Insisting on responding to everything in a big scene isn't realistic whether it's done in one huge monster pose or if it's done by interjecting oneself every few poses. No matter how it's done, I always get an image of a little fairy flitting here, there, and everywhere whenever any single player insists that they do & see all the things!

@Arkandel I dunno about others, but my RL has been pretty busy, enough so that I can't predict my schedule and so I haven't signed up for anything because I don't know what I can sign up for.

Also, please don't take offense, but +events/PRPs just aren't my thing. I'll do them occasionally, but they're a little side thing and not the reason I RP.

@SG said in Social Conflict via Stats:

If I were going to design a social conflict system it would be something like this:

Social Conflict System.

SP (Social Points): 1d8/ level + wisdom bonus
Social Status: 10 + Intelligence Bonus + Style Bonus + Political Power

Attacks:

Shame! 1d4 SP damage + charisma bonus.
Threaten! 1d6 SP damage + Charisma bonus.
Lie! 1d6 SP damage + charisma bonus.
The Scathing Truth! 1d10 SP Damage + Charisma Bonus.

Back them up! Friend heals 1d6 SP.

In order to wound someone's SP, you roll 1d20 against their Social Status. On a successful attack, their Social Points go down by the indicated number. When a player reaches 0 SP, they are left stammering and speechless, unable to carry on meaningfully in the conversation.

Overall I like the simplicity, but I worry that it may be too antagonistic. It would very clearly be used in social attacks, which is not always what you want social combat for.

@Groth said in Social Conflict via Stats:

The problem generally is that people don't roll up Swordsmen to kill people, they do it because they want to be awesome at swording. If you offer them the ability to kill all their enemies through carbon-monoxide poisoning, while having a terrible reputation as a swordsman, that would probably not feel very fulfilling. In the same way I don't think I'd feel very good about my Casanova character if it was talked about as a pushy stalker.

The problem from a game design standpoint is that when you look at the actual situations in which people want to use persuasion, they tend to either be rather short term (Hostage negotiation, wanting to get through a door, offering a bribe etc) or they're about changing someones mind. In a purely results focused system you can support the former however to be useful, it would need to be resolved within a single scene and that's the use-case most of the single-roll social combat systems attempt to fill.

Then design a system that caters to what you think players want. What I don't get about this discussion are the people arguing that because not everyone will be happy with a social combat system then no one should ever attempt to make one. Look, you may not want social combat in your game, but I would actually love to play a game that had that as an aspect and based on this thread, other people would like to try out a game with that, too. If other people don't want to play on a game with social combat then they can stick to games that don't implement that as a system, but why does this have to be an all or nothing proposition?

@Groth Got access to the bank accounts, didn't I?

I mean, it's all what expectations are set by the rules being put forth. If you create a ruleset that is focused on results and everyone knows that they can't dictate feelings, then yes, people might be frustrated, but they should be OK with that.

@Groth

A social combat system does not necessarily have to dictate how someone feels.

Example:
Person A wants access to Person B's bank accounts. Without social combat, they're up a creek unless they're have skills in thievery, hacking, whatever OR they're a manipulative RPer.

With my ideal social combat system, Person A decides to Seduce Person B. They succeed at their roles which happen over several scenes and weeks. This doesn't mean that Player B is seduced. Player B does give over access to the bank accounts, but if Player B wants to decide that Player A is coming on really strong and they're a bit afraid of Player A being a stalker and that's why they give over access to their bank accounts. Good on them.

Because it happens slowly, if they also want to arrange an intervention with their PC buddies, because they think Player A is an asshole and they don't want to be mixed up with him, they have time to do so. They can also avoid the player in the future, just like someone might do RL.

@Miss-Demeanor No one is talking about the Doors system specifically.
I agree that the doors system is terrible in a MU, but why can't someone pick up and code a different system that takes some of the concerns into account and does work in a MU environment.

There are a plethora of different systems for combat. There are a plethora of different systems for investigation. Come up with a different, better system.

@Miss-Demeanor said in Social Conflict via Stats:

But I am notorious in still living in the 90s, when WoD would unapologetically fuck your shit up in every arena, then taunt you for not having brought a backup character sheet ready to go. God I miss the days when people would whine less about losing a character.... or even the autonomy of their character.

Maybe this is why I enjoy playing ghouls and thralls on vampire games. I like being the underdog that has next to nothing going for them (except the one thing if they can figure out how to leverage it), and then seeing them rise above their circumstance. It's a good story!

Losing control and having to fight your way back is a good story. This is why I don't understand the resistance to social combat. No one likes to have a character pulled from them, but allowing a system to mess your character up (without dictating how your character thinks or feels about it) is a really good dynamic to add to a story and something seen in almost every piece of fiction.

Of course, this runs on the assumption that people are on MUs to tell character-driven stories and not just look cool, and evidence tells me that assumption may be mistaken.

Because I'm a big believer that there should be a way to use social stats in a game, and if the game is political/non-sandboxy, then you need a way to use social stats against other players, I did a thing.

The attached document is a sample social combat system, written around WoD rules since those seem to be the most prominent. It focuses on effects of social roles, not dictating how a character feels about them. It's slowly escalating, meaning that it takes a lot of work to get someone under your thumb. It gives the defender choice, retains their autonomy over their character, and rewards playing to the situation.

I'm not sure about the 'first to three' rule, but the other option would be imposing a condition on the first roll.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1oE0Xw1ydn4o1tgvgdOJOPeTxKwLmhnfaPOuB52gyfSU/edit?usp=sharing

@Arkandel Which is why it should take longer than a roll. Social rolls should give small victories on the way to larger goals. This is what the door system tries to do, but fails by not being properly integrated. If I want to change something core about a character it should take a ton of work and several scenes of me working with that character.

There's been a lot of talk of RfK's social system's, but no one's actually talked about it's social combat system. It wasn't used all that often, because social rolls still fail at being normalized, but it remains one of my favorite social combat systems, and was the driving force behind one of the best scene's I've done.

The game's gone, so I have to pull up memories from a year ago, but as best as I can recall, the system consisted of a list of 'actions' that players could take. These actions weren't the end goal of persuade or seduce, but they were the strategies that a person could take to get there. They were actions like 'fast-talk,' 'sweet-talk,' or 'intimidate.' Each of these actions had a different set of conditions as a result. For the most part, these were your WoD 2.0 conditions, but I think there were some game-specific conditions as well. They were mostly small and immediate, giving a +2 dice bonus or a penalty to a roll until the end of the scene, etc. etc. Conditions were also incentivized by getting a beat when resolved and at times, just for getting a condition.

It didn't really slow-down RP, but it did make persuading someone or getting someone on your side a process that involved a lot of back and forth. TBH, it made AJ persuading me to do something fun.

It wasn't perfect, and I would have changed things. I think the actions/moves were sometimes worded confusingly and were over complicated. I think there needed to be a wider variety of actions and conditions, and I would have simplified them to a simple 'method, roll, resist, result.' Also, I would have leaned towards letting the loser of the roll pick which condition they take, so as to avoid the whole 'You can't tell me what I feel!' argument. Nope, you get to decide how you feel, but you lost that roll, so you still get a consequence.

@Cupcake On another day, I'd be happy to talk about my own, personal beliefs with you, as muddy and complicated as they are.

That is not a conversation that I have the patience for today, though. Please see above.

Recently, my sister gave birth to a very early and very small preemie. Born a trimester early and weighing only a pound, there was no guarantee that she would survive the first few hours, although she thankfully did. In fact, the baby's doing extremely well, although there's still no guarantee that she'll ever be brought home.

This level of uncertainty is why it's especially infuriating to learn that some people from my parent's church have been resharing my sister's FB updates and using them to promote their prolife agenda.

Don't get me wrong, both my sister and I lean prolife ourselves. But it's a bit shitty to politicize someone else's life while it's hanging in the balance and without even talking to them about it first.

@Cupcake I totes get that feeling and it sucks. For some reason, it seems like I'm always a periphery member to all my friend groups, so if I'm around when they're doing something, that's cool. But, I also get excluded from a lot of things because it just never occurred to anyone to invite me. There's a lot of self-esteem and self-doubt issues that get all tangled up in that and so I've definitely been where you are and totally and completely sympathize!

Halt and Catch Fire just finished their 3rd season. It gets a bit rocky at points, but they also had some of the best moments I've ever experienced on TV. Seasons 1 & 2 are on Netflix if you want to give them a try.

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

I can definitely see where you're coming from. But something to keep in mind is that, on the other hand, it limits those people who want every plot to be about them, and they have to steal the spotlight and do all of the things; by giving them a finite amount of background actions they can take per week it opens up some useful tasks for other players, too, not just those who get to play 24/7 or have meticulously crunched the numbers on their +sheets to be great at everything.

A secondary but important effect of this is it makes forming alliances and groups actually necessarily instead of just being social conveniences. If you want to keep up with competing factions or save the world or...whatever you are forced to find others to compliment your IC skills, or just so they can focus on one thing while you do another. Whereas for example a triple-Master on Mage@TR all that stuff was really pretty optional; they could have researched, investigated or scried all the things you could possibly throw at them, forever.

I'm not exactly sure that it's meeting that goal yet, but I also know they're still working on improving the system.

I listened to this episode a while ago, and I think there are some similarities:

a) both Tulpas and RP Chars are made up in human heads.
b) People in both communities meet and expand their social circles because they are in those communities (some people could argue that our social circles become smaller, too, but debate for another day).

That's honestly where I see the similarities end. The biggest reason for this is that in the online RP community IC and OOC separation has always been sacred. It's the one thing that we can all agree on. We may have different preferences for where to draw the line with some people preferring a more "immersive" environment while others want more OOC collaboration and cooperation. However, most everyone agrees that when the line between character and self are blurred bad things happen. People get too attached, too possessive. They might be too concerned with winning or pursuing an IC relationship and less concerned with story. Whatever form it takes, drama ends up happening, and so unlike the people in the tulpa community, every RPer I've ever met has actively discouraged this sort of blurring of the lines.