Posts made by Lisse24

Obviously someone needs to work on a new option for a L&L game.

@Tinuviel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

A small yappy animal, that my neighbours are somehow getting away with calling a dog, has been barking for two and a half solid hours. This would not normally be an issue, except that it is twenty past one in the goddamn morning and I'm already prone to headaches.

This also describes my new neighbors dachshunds, which are small, yappy, and overly-aggressive dogs. I've never disliked a dog until these things.

@RDC said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

@Lisse24 said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

Also, there's information asymmetry. As staff, you see everyone's aspirations, what's getting fulfilled and what's sitting, a player doesn't see all that information. They don't know what makes a good asp or a hard to fulfill asp because they just don't have access to enough information.

Oh, yes. Definitely. This is why it's staff's job to teach those expectations. It's just not easy to teach "our expectations are really low" after other games (not naming any names) hammer home that passive-aggressive punitive responses are the norm to people acting like games should be fun and pretty easy to play.

Thought about this some more over night, and I actually don't think it's that hard. I think you can clue people by explicitly stating how often you expect asps to be completed and then making sure this information is very visible.

If you want short-term asps to be simple enough that they can complete one nearly every time they scene, say so. If a PC should be able to make progress on a long-term asp every week or two, say so. This will help players frame their asps to better meet your expectations. I still think the fact that short-term asps create a job and have to be manually approved creates a mental block in most players minds, but by loudly declaring that claiming a ton of asps is OK, you can combat that.

Also, today is totally the busiest day of the busiest week of the year for me, but I'll totally pop into NOLA at some point!

@RDC I think the problem with writing little asps, is that when fulfilling them creates a job, it doesn't feel like something that you should be checking off every scene or so. Something that creates a job gives the impression that it should be bigger.

Also, there's information asymmetry. As staff, you see everyone's aspirations, what's getting fulfilled and what's sitting, a player doesn't see all that information. They don't know what makes a good asp or a hard to fulfill asp because they just don't have access to enough information.

@Macha said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

So I just got fired for having sugar crashes at work. This will be fun.

I am so, so sorry!

@Coin I've been playing with the idea of a peer-confirmed process. So you complete an asp, it publishes to the room, people then confirm that it happened or not.

This would:
a) Take staff mostly out of the equation and make it more automatic
b) Increasing overall use of the system by reminding those players that tend to forget about asps that they exist and they should be fulfilling them
c) Feeding player creativity and empowerment by exposing them to a wide variety of potential asps that would serve as inspiration.

Could this be abused? Sure. Anything could be abused, but I think we design for the game and players we want and then deal quickly and harshly with those who try to game the system.

@Ganymede said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

@RDC said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

Unpopular opinion: Generic CofD 2e game where the defining feature is that staff just kind of stay out of your way and let you play the game without metaplot or too much staff-lead politics and stuff. >.>

It's a fair opinion to have, but I have not seen this work in practice for longer than a few months.

I think in order for this to work, you still need to encourage play. In most recent WoD/CoD games this has been through metaplot, which is top-down. I think if you want a game that is bottom-up, it can still work and would perhaps work even better, but only if replace the time you'd spend planning an elaborate metaplot instead focusing on systems that encourage interaction and RP. I think you'd really have to heavily think about design and how/why characters would interact and how do you push them towards that. And I don't think that relieves the staff from having to put in plot seeds, they'd still need to give story reasons for players to interact, they just might be smaller, more personal stories.

Continuing yesterday's gripe, I'm supposed to give a webinar this evening, and I'm clinging on to what remains of my voice with every ounce of my being. Will take recommendations on how to quickly restore vocal strength (even if it only lasts an hour)!

I've had a low-grade fever all weekend and now I'm sitting at work with a fever of 100.something, feeling just bad enough to want to be lazy, but not bad enough to justify going home, especially since I have several deadlines coming up.

I gotta say, I'm torn on this too.

One, yes we're here to tell stories, but there's no author who puts everything on screen. Ton's of stuff happens off camera where the reader/viewer can't see, but still has an impact.

If some ditz doesn't wanna play out a scene that exists solely to embarrass them, even if they brought that scene on themselves, I have no problem with that. So long as it's firmly established that Private A got chewed out by Captain B in front of Squad C and everyone in Squad C saw and knows. Now obviously, ducking out of the getting chewed out scene shouldn't equal ducking out of consequences and that's when I think things get trickier and if a player equates ducking out of the scene itself to ducking out of consequence and continues to be a PITA, you might have to make it clear that they're ability to play the character is going to be severely compromised if their characters actions don't change.

Just a little reminder that The Deuce started up again this week. It's a great show and if you haven't checked it out yet, you should!

Got a few episodes under my belt, thanks to being sick. I can see why the show would be appealing to someone who really likes Changeling, or who the aesthetic appeals to. There's also a lot of inspiration to be had for settings.

But without those predilections the show itself is ... ouch.
The acting isn't Sandsnake bad, but it's not great, and the politics are about as subtle as a sledgehammer.

I've watched enough to get a feel for the setting, which, again, has a ton of potential, but I don't think I'll be finishing the show.

@Auspice This is always my favorite:
More adventures in replying to spam.

@Ganymede said in Whatever Happened To Star Wars MU*s?:

@Ghost said in Whatever Happened To Star Wars MU*s?:

If anything, I think MU could do well with dice systems that aid in RP decisions over hard dice systems that are black and white to target number pass/fail. Trinary systems are great.

The thing is that, insofar as scenes without a storyteller may be concerned, FFG presents a problem. For example:

"You pass, but something happens in the scene that complicates the scene."

Well, what is that complication? It's not clear from the rules. A storyteller is in a position to tell players what that might be, but what about when it is player-and-player, as one often finds in social situations? I can see players hitting this result and feeling uncertain or uncomfortable in making the call when all participates are essentially at the same level.

I like FFG a lot, but I can see what it would turn off a good number of us.

I played FFG Star Wars in a TT setting, where the GM often had us determine our own drawbacks and benefits and it was a problem then. At one point or another everyone in the group was flailing around trying to determine what was appropriate. In a MU, this could have easily turned into an hours long discussion, since you wouldn't necessarily have a GM right there, pushing us to move on.

@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.

I've always been interested in Marsilikos, but since I don't know anything about the Kushiel books, I've never done anything more than look.

Discussion with a co-worker:

Me: So this advertising write-up you did for my project looks great, but I'm gonna nix the pop-up on the website, because everyone hates those and it seems like we have better ways to advertise things.

Co-worker: Oh. I actually really like pop-ups.

Me:

@Admiral said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Apos No... Arx exists solely because Firan does not.

I mean, I wouldn't say that, but Arx definitely benefitted from ex-Firan players networking with each other and with their other RP-groups.

It also benefits from giving players something to do, having a large playerbase already, policies that nudge players towards finding RP and breaking out of cliques, and, yes, not being shy about banning problem players.

Arx isn't quite the game for me, but it does a ton of things right and all of them contribute to its success.

@Ganymede said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

@Thenomain said in Getting Young Blood Into MU*'ing:

I do think that picking system and picking setting are different situations, but demanding people Know All Phase 3 Marvel Movies is a consideration alongside Buying Every WoD Book In Existence.

The WoD 2E books are all fairly self-sufficient. Having the CoD helps, but you don't need it.

Granted, those books are voluminous and horrifyingly dry at times.

And horribly written from an instructional design POV (though slightly better than their predecessors).

I drug all the furniture in from my porch FOR NOTHING. Harrumph.