Best posts made by Lithium

@Jennkryst said:

@NotaNumber said:

I love the setting of Shadowrun ... but, my experiences with Denver over the years make me question whether it is a great thing to try and use the system online.

Then again, if this gets off the ground, I'll probably try anyway because fuck it, Shadowrun.

Many of the issues with Denver stem from it being SR3 (bucketloads of karma pool), and as such, the numerous house rules floating around. Some of it also had to do with the revolving door of staffers changing things, and Alpha just wanting to play/refusal to make the hard call on staff stuff. Examples include... the attempted matrix re-write, because they were just so... unintuitive, and then the one decker player got brought on staff to consult (despite numerous complaints), and decreed 'MATRIX IS FINE AS IS, GO ABOUT YOUR BUSINESS, NO FIXES NEEDED EVER' Add onto it the current Chief of Staff constantly griping about staff decisions publically despite the fact that staff fired one of the best PR people on there ever for doing the same thing.

tl;dr, Denver's issues are more about it being Denver, and less about it being Shadowrun.

^^^^^

I played on Denver when it first opened and it was decent, then the karma bloat happened and /that/ is one of the precursors that killed the game in any meaningful way. That was a problem with SR3 and there was the endless House Rules that followed. Once there were people with more karma pool than cyberzombies firearms pool (and likely long before then) there was serious cascade failures going on with trying to make things work with that system.

Personally I am a fan of letting people make their own stories, make their own content as it were, so I am less concerned with PvP than others might be. I personally believe that nobody should feel /safe/ in ShadowRun, at any given time, because that is at odds with the setting and Denver had very draconian rules on player vs player conflict, at least when I was there (Which was admittedly forever ago).

One of the reasons I am converting 5th edition down to 2050 is because it is a lot more balanced than 3rd edition and the system is balanced enough that even a soak monster can still be taken out with just a little bit of planning so if someone steps out of line to much then they will probably get dealt with. It's also why I am making CharGen be mostly automated, to reduce the barrier to entry and perhaps make it non-existant.

For Example: If someone goes into CharGen and takes the Ganger archetype for their race, and answers the background questions they'll get approved very very quickly (maybe even with zero delay) because I want Gangs to form up. I want PC's to lead street gangs. I want the Urban Jungle to be a scary beast that will chew up runners and spit them out if they don't follow the rules or be careful and take pains to protect themselves.

I have a lot of plans and systems going into place to help promote RP though and plots. There will be runs being offered by Johnsons played by staff, and then there will be a bank of runs for players to run for their fellows should they choose that will be closely tied in to the overarching story of the game to create an interactive web of plot threads that may not seem interconnected on the surface.

Another idea I am tossing around is dedicated Fixer's for established Teams. Get a group of friends together who can all be on at the same time and work as a team and there's a good chance of weekly or bi-weekly runs for your team through your fixer to help push the story forwards and to promote the 'team' dynamic as there's only so many jobs a random collection of people put together can work on.

That is what I will primarily need staff for, someone for Deckers, someone for Gangers, someone for the Triads/Yakuza/Mafia etc.

Admittedly I have no idea how big the player base will be, so I don't know exactly how many staffers I will need but I do know this: One and done. I have zero tolerance for staff cheating.

I see the Matrix as so much information that it just seems like EM polution in cities like that would have drastic interference quality and make hot matrix just silly with wireless matrix for anything serious. I also like wired matrix because I grew up with a wired Matrix, so this shift to wireless is like a hole different genre to me, less gritty, more flash, it's like it gave up some of it's identity by making technomancers and a wireless matrix made it feel less ShadowRun to me.

So sorry got rambly there.

Wired Matrix = Higher Data Transmission, less packet loss and corruption, etc.

Wireless Matrix = World of Social Media. I hate Social Media.

Your Mileage May Vary.

Buy to play is dying? No. It's just not as absurdly profitable as it was. It is still profitable if the company is ran properly.

GW2, still profitable.
WoW, still profitable.
Hell even original EQ and EQ2 are still profitable.

The ones that aren't profitable as the ones that are closing.
f2p/p2w though, it grabs at the fast and easy money, which there is a lot of so it is more profitable.

@Gingerlily said:

Has anyone played a game that had a system for influence and reputation (not Status: Whatever) something dynamic that was changed for better or worse by players in game actions? Was this fun? Totally not fun? How did it work and what did you like or not like about it? Did other players have ways of influencing it (Like if Player A acted like a complete jackass in public, could Players B, C, and D who were in the scene do something to make his reputation go down? Or up respectively if he did something awesome)

Tell me your stories, ideas, methods. The only game I have played on with anything like this was Blood of Dragons (yes, yes I did), but it was only partially complete and I was never quite sure how it was operating.

Thanks thanks!

I've coded up something for my ShadowRun game that is based off street cred and notoriety. Every action has the chance to impact those things, the Johnsons will influence them, Fixers, other players, etc.

As for how it will work? No clue, games not ready yet.

I would love to play an Eclipse Phase game, but, I am curious how chargen is going to work. The way it's written you can make a custom body that is tricked out to the nines, and when you die, somehow, you get another one of those bodies cuz you paid for it at chargen. Are you going to allow that kind of customization or simple have a list of sleeves for people to pick from.

I don't mind either path, but one is a /lot/ more code intensive than the other and it needs to be decided from the get go.

@aria I feel you there. When my sister and I went to the cops over something that happened to us, they threatened us with slander and perjury charges instead of doing their fucking job.

I would like to think things have changed for the better since the late 80's, but then I wake up.

@dariryu Consent based? For Final Fantasy? Think I'll just walk away slowly with my hands up in a non-threatening manner

Once a long time ago in a game far far away, there was discussion of an Eclipse Phase MU* being made but it never saw the light of reality. I think the idea was actually to set the game way out in the Oort Cloud, the Khuiper(sp) Belt where there is a pandora gate and it's a station controlled by many different factions that way there was a lot of variety in character types, politics, intrigue, gate jumping, and you could of course ego cast to go anywhere else.

As to the morph's, I expect you'll see a lot of Fury Morph's. Given that the theme of the game is transhumanity, not being able to custom design your shell/sleeve is kind of a bummer but yeah coding would be a pita.

Halestorm.

That is all.

@tempest Final Fantasy is a level based grinder, most of the time, it is more akin to D&D in many of the iterations than anything else. Even so far as having prestige classes for some of them.

There are versions which are different of course but in the end I am not a fan of pure consent anything. Not even comic book games, I always prefer an actual dice system with a more codified means of character advancement.

Pure Consent, with no system at all... Well, needless to say, it's very off topic and probably would derail it's own thread if it had one.

@apu said in RL things I love:

@lithium

I was attracted to it by... well, let's be honest. The concept is a bit on the absurd side, which really appealed to me. The idea of someone just barely over three feet tall being a serious ass kicker also had its charm. And she has proven to be rather viable as a fighter, when my dice decide not to hate me, which is a very nice surprise.

It is a bit absurd but, no why are dwarves the only short race that gets to kick ass? One of my favorite things about Dark Sun is the Halflings scared the shit out of everyone. Why? Because they were cannibals. Tiny. Dangerous. Adorable. Cannibals.

Though... what's more absurd, a halfling barbarian... or the idea that halflings, elves, dwarves, etc, exist at all. It's fantasy. Be fantastic.

@kanye-qwest I kind of agree, the whole idea of 1963/1964 is that the world is supposed to be moving forwards at that time, and yet there is a clear policy of zero tolerance. Marvel was not that intolerant, it pushed it's intolerance onto a fictional type of being (mutants) in order to represent intolerance and the injustice of it. To actively promote an intolerant attitude and pick a timeline where Tolerance was a thing...

It just squicks me.

Comments like @Jennkryst are why we can't have nice things in MU's, real world peeve, people who /know/ what they are doing is fucked up, insulting, and otherwise being a douche, and do it anyways.

@collective FASERIP is awesome, but how do you do OC's with it? Random rolls? Converting it to a point system?

I have to listen to holiday music, aka, Christmas Songs all night at work, and I've heard about thirty seven different artists do Rudolph the red nosed reindeer now...

I got to thinking, that song, the lessons it gives you... man.

1. If you're a mutant/abnormal/strange, expect to be belittled and mocked and nobody wants to play with you.
2. You will be sad your whole life until...
3. A figure of 'authority' or 'power' decides that holy shit, this thing happened and now your abnormality/mutation is absolutely needed to not fuck up /my/ day.
4. Once you are useful, you are liked and wanted.
5. Your value is entirely subjective based on others' opinions of you, let's hope your abnormality can be profited off of.
6. Santa was a dick, for not taking a stand and going to Rudolph's defense long before that foggy Christmas eve...

@ixokai Sexism and intolerance is a thing even today. Anyone who thinks otherwise is lying to themselves or perhaps so privileged they don't see it.

The thing for me is that RP and Games are meant to be an escape from reality, and it seems an odd point to try and enforce for gaming pleasure.

Or maybe it's just not directed towards me, and that is completely fine, but it strikes me as a bit odd where you claim that sexuality doesn't matter for even FC's on your game, but then you put forth that intolerance about sexuality and sex is a big thing on your game.

Paradoxical.

@cobaltasaurus Delivery work can get you by, I've done it before as well. You might want to see if Amazon Flex is open in your area, if you can get in it's an easy 75$ a day with a normal 4 door sedan style car for about 4 hours work.

@ganymede Then change the title?

Fuck it.

Whatever.

@sockmonkey That's the way I took that particular story arc/timeline to be too.

@sparks The reason so many find combat integral to plot fu, is because it is the one thing that doesn't seem impartial. Stats are on the sheet, dice are rolled, system is consulted, results are given. There are no vagaries to it. When a plot is more social, it is really easy to feel like someone doesn't matter at all.

To whit: I was in a plot once, it was literally a discovery plot. Me and one other person. The NPC flat out /ignored/ my character, which was due to social merits and stats, pretty much impossible and yet... I was ignored. Nothing I said was responded to.

It's these kind of situations that burn people on social plot fu, and it totally is a once bitten twice shy situation for many people because as we all know, people remember the bad much more easily than the good.