Best posts made by Lithium

I just want to see some people play to actual /archetype/. When I last played anything remotely oWoD (Years ago) there was no such thing as a gang banger Brujah iconoclast. There were no Biker Gangrel's about. There were no actual Artist Toreador (They were all trying to sleep with Nosferatu). There were no hard core Children of Gaia Rahu (they were all like, white hat hippies even when they should have been in frenzy). There were no Ragabash who were actually bad ass (They were all sniveling bitches).

The amount of social power a gang could bear down with is immense, but I never see them used for anything other than bodies with shotguns & Dragonsbreath rounds. Not every Glasswalker embraces cybernetics & the internet. Not every Shadow Lord is evil. Not every Silver Fang is the next coming of Albrecht.

Maybe things have changed in the many years since I've played oWoD, maybe not.

I would just want to see those Archetypes that made me think a clan and it's lore was cool, not all the 'out of the box' characters who are so far out of the box you have to wonder why they would be embraced into the clan to begin with.

My system on PrP's is that players can run them so long as they don't violate the (listed) theme points on the PrP help file /and/ do not break theme. Breaking theme is important, and is a very /expansive/ thing. It stops not only the Smurf Revolution in downtown Los Angeles, but it also stops people acquiring .50 caliber sniper rifles off a drug dealer on the corner as well. Just for examples.

Anyone can run a PrP, at any time, and so long as it follows those rules (le-gasp, rules) and they post an edited log to the wiki, while mailing staff the unedited log that can be approved for bonus xp or whatnot, then they get the bonus goodies unless they break theme.

That might be to restrictive to some, but it works for me, and I hope it doesn't restrict what people do on my game.

Personally, ditch anything resembling FC's and characters from already published media.

I don't want to see someone else's vision of SuperMan, I want to see an original creation out of their imagination that sure, might be based on Big Blue but isn't going to murder anyone else's idea of SuperMan.

You run into it a lot on FC games where someone will change a characters sexuality, or just interpret it other than what is stated in the comics.

For one example: The original Ice Man (Bobby Drake) wasn't Homosexual, he was always dating women, he wasn't good at it, but there was no sign that he was playing for the other team (This was before the students brought forwards story arc where /that/ original Bobby is homosexual) but on some games that featured FC's there was tons of demand for someone to make Bobby gay just because they thought he should be. I personally never saw him as gay, even though I am not exactly straight myself, so those demands came off as unwanted and weird to me.

TL;DR nobody's idea of a FC is going to fit everyone else's idea for an FC. So just don't.

There's also /plenty/ of games that people can play FC's, you want new blood, try something new.

As for system, yeah M&M has a couple games but the system has some serious issues (You have to buy a bulletproof power for 5 points to be immune to bullets, but you can't be immune to knives, just bullets. Go figure, for example.) along with some really easy ways to break the PL system through Feats/Advantages.

There's one Aberrant game I know of, it's really small last I checked but Aberrant has the issue of low starting points by the book, it's hard to be really /good/ unless you're hyper focused.

Savage Worlds has some fan base, as does a few others. I think there's a couple FS3 super hero games as well. I know there is still at least one Champions game but that is way to crunchy for most casual or newbies to the system.

Personally, I still want to see an old FASERIP game updated for use with a mush, with random rolled creation and everything

@Ganymede What XP caps do though, is force you to minmax if you want to be really GOOD at something. When you have a cap of XP total earned you must plan everything down to the last point if you want to have an optimized build.

Does every character require an optimized build? Absolutely not.

James Bond (just as an example) however /does/.

As does any reasonable special forces type character, or thousand year old viking vampire...

The thing that is sticking here is that people are attempting to find a one size fits all answer to a problem that doesn't /have/ a one size fits all answer. This is what I was trying to point out to @Thenomain that unfortunately got lost in translation somewhere. I wasn't trying to attack anyone, I was just trying to say that there are different strokes for different folks, and different game systems.

The age old answer of XP, character growth, etc, is going to be the same as anything else when it comes to this hobby: It depends on the person. Just like there's no one true game system that everyone believes is perfect or even the best, there's no one way to model character growth that will satisfy everyone.

I don't like saving the world plots because there's only more saving the world. Oh I suppose you could go up to saving the galaxy, or the universe, or whatever but... it's a scale that would just get redundant.

I believe large arcs should be more than just saving the planet, there should be the chance to fundamentally /alter/ some aspect or aspects of the game world, to have a definite impact and a good meta plot/arc has the ability to end in a variety of fashions. Like, if there was say twenty different major plots in the arc. the players resolved 10 one way, 3 another, 2 another and failed 5, but out of the 5 failed 3 were failed one way and 2 another.

You have to be able to write out the results in a way that make sense as to those individual resolutions in addition to the overall story resolution.

Also: Win or Lose, plot/arc resolutions need to lead to /more/ stories. Don't pain yourself into a corner.

Protagonists who are unwilling to risk character death, aren't fucking protagonists. They're couch warmers.

IMHO this is all nonsense.

Success is people having fun.

Full stop.

It's a game, if people are playing the game and having fun, then it is a success.

You can try and quantify it as more people having fun on your game but, that doesn't always happen and isn't a useful metric anyways. Are people having fun, are you having fun running the game, maintaining it, etc?

If yes, then it is a success.

Telenukes are the antithesis of RP. It's one reason why I hate WoD anymore because so many things can just drop 'you lose' buttons on your head and there's not a lot you can do about it.

Hell I remember when the Baali basically had a World Reset power that fully summoned a prime true demon to the world that could do anything.

Nexus Crawlers or anything with Reality Warp/Manip (Any ST that doesn't use this in the most horrific way possible isn't being true to how scary those things are supposed to be).

The traditional mage Telenuke, etc.

So I don't use them. Telenuke is not an option in the game systems I use because they don't add to roleplay. They just end it with some dice rolling.

Everything is very rules light anymore it seems, which is fine, but I want a little more meat and potatoes in my game system than Faraday's system or FATE or (god forbid) pure consent could possibly give.

I get that a lot of people want to tell stories, but, a crunchy system doesn't stop you from telling stories, it /helps/ you tell stories because you have the rules for whatever situation might be at hand (in theory) where as rules light systems are so much GM fiat you don't have a common ground to stand on.

Maybe it's just a sign of the times, but we need new games with crunchy systems. We can't rely on these ancient games with all their drama and dinosaurs to really supply a fair and unbiased game for new people.

This is why ARX and Rogue One interest me so much I think, they have a system I can learn and make what I want to make with a system that isn't pretty much playing rock paper scissors and the effect being completely derived by the GM.

@Arkandel It's not a generalization, it's my experience. It's what I've seen. I'm not saying that there might not be some good RP'er who use one line or no line descs, just that it's what /I/ have experienced and what I've come to expect because of it.

Just because you may have had other experiences, doesn't invalidate my own.

@faraday The character loss being to much of an investment is dependent on how hard it is to get into the game.

If it's a trial to even GET on the grid, then yeah, character loss sucks hard.

If it's /easy/ to get on the game, then Character Loss can (and should imho) be an important part of a post apocalyptic setting.

@Thenomain For games like Fall Coast (I have never been there so this is pure conjecture) is also one of the reasons that Dark Metal had a huge player base at the time compared to a lot of other games:

Freedom.

From what I understand Fall Coast is entirely about your clique, there's very little interaction between clique's, and when there is it is usually spectacularly nasty which of course drives drama. This allows a wide variety of freedom available for the player base to play out their stories.

Dark Metal was similar in that it was so batshit crazy(tm), and I say that fondly as I quite enjoyed it from time to time, that people literally did practically anything they wanted to, and most of the time it didn't matter.

That's another type of freedom.

So as to why some games don't have the same kind of weight, you get situations where player A gets butthurt because player B does something IC that hurt their OOC feelings. So they run to staff and set up official complaints against others or they start up campaigns badmouthing others. It doesn't matter what type of scene this is, but once it happens and it starts snowballing... people /stop/ trying to include others because the risk is to high that shit is going to go sideways.

I also think the current mindset of just throwing XP at people also doesn't help create RP on the grid, sure, vote systems were something of a popularity contest but at least they got people out there doing stuff.

Of course ymmv and I could be very wrong, but it's just how it seems to me. What's the point of doing anything if it doesn't amount to anything? Where's the incentive? Sure there's the 'story' but for a great many people they also like character development and growth which is part of why some people hate pure consent games.

Steampunk. Victorian. Super Heroes.

I'd be ALL over that.

All over it.

I /NEED/ a Pirate Game.

Need it.

So bad.

Now that I am job hunting I keep wanting to build one because I have extra prime time... time.

But I want a Pirate Game. Give me a D&D game with pirate focus. Give me an Earthdawn game with Sky Pirates as playables. Give me a ShadowRun game set in the islands. Give me a Lord and Ladies game set in the 1700's down in the Bahamas.

Give.
Me.
Pirates.

Why put it during the time of Revan and Malik to begin with?

You have plenty of space to breathe in The Old Republic, it was a huge span of time.

By tying yourself to that period in time you are restricting the story /and/ making huge FC's/NPC's again.

So you are adding problems.

I would go for a time period some 1000 years or so after The Old Republic (Bioware's MMO). You could create whole new threats, leave the game wide open for whole new heroes (PC's!) and you have complete creative freedom to do whatever you please without upsetting traditionalists.

@auspice L.A. Noire is the only reason I still own a PS3 (That's a lie, Red Dead Redemption is also a reason, And Gran Tourismo but... anyways...)

@faraday said:

@Glitch I have no willpower.

Fixed the extra die problem. [6, 5, 3, 1, 1] will make one raise out of 6+3+1 with [5, 1] left over.

If left over dice are bad, why wouldn't it make a raise out of 5, 3, 1, and 1 with 6 left over?

Ship adventure would be just like a PrP or Staff Plot.

The main game takes place at the pirate port.

People don't like to lose anywhere, but there are game genre's where people losing is not considered a cardinal sin.

There are genre's where character loss is not a cardinal sin too..

The real way to do it is to have a minor barrier of entry, and staff willing to say: No. (This is something every game needs, not just this genre)

As to the type of pirates, anything can be done right. Personally I'd do it in a setting that was alternate world, with a history similar to ours up to a point and then going it's own way.

@mercutio said in A New Star Wars game? (Legends of The Old Republic (Name pending)):

@lithium
You run into unfamiliarity issues. And often, people do want to be part of some of the amazing scenarios brought in with the timeline.

What unfamiliarity issues? It's Star Wars.

It doesn't change /that/ much. You have the Republic. You have Big Bads. You have privateers, pirates, mercenaries, cutthroats, merchants...

All it means is that you make up a new big bad, or multiple, tell your own story.

How is this a bad thing?

There comes a point where you're not going to get a lot of actual box sales with a title like Overwatch and it'll need to go F2P with loot boxes being the primary money maker. I'm sure loot boxes already /are/ the primary money maker but...

I pre-ordered overwatch and it is a fun game. I don't play it all that often anymore cuz... can't voice chat without rabid hate, and playing an fps without voice chat is just frustrating in the entirety.