Posts made by Lithium

I make just above the poverty line last year cuz of move, swapping jobs, etc.

Somehow, I end up /paying/ Taxes above and beyond what I paid, when I got paid.

And people still think this new tax plan is going to fucking /help/ me?!

Assholes.

@ghost The funny part, is he didn't see it. Still doesn't see it. And won't see it.

@sockmonkey I wish I was a swedish citizen, I would move. Like. Now.

@ghost Heh Good Luck.

@Faraday That's the thing about FATE though is it /doesn't/ remove player Agency, until you are so far gone your character likely would have left before it got to that point.

So for example:

We go somewhere, someone is doing/saying something we don't like, they keep harassing us with it, we can do a few things but depending on our personalities we typically do one of three things:

1. We argue about it.
2. We leave.
3. If someone is being offensive, we go for help.

This is FATE social combat in a nutshell. You can argue/debate (Roll social combat fu), you can leave (Concede to losing the scene, have your character leave before any major consequences), or you can go for help (Maybe use contacts or resources as a social attack by calling friends or paying the bouncer to bump someone out the door).

FATE has everything to do with Player Agency, while also keeping system there to adjudicate.

This is why I really like the Fate social combat system, you can /always/ concede if you are losing, it's incredibly hard to be one shot, and if you concede you get to choose how you get taken out of the scene. So if you don't want to be seduced, have your character get frustrated at the constant seduction techniques and they leave/go home.

You would only get 'seduced' if you resisted the seducing to the point you had severe psychological issues (big complications) and they had the opportunity to dictate how you were taken out.

I don't know why people are so against the system when it handles social combat so well without removing agency unless you simply refuse to let someone 'win'.

Starting a new job, no paycheck for 3 weeks, got things balanced just on the razor's edge of 'if anything at all happens, we're well and truly fucked but ok unless something happens' until my paychecks start coming in...

My partners paycheck gets fucked because HR didn't change her direct deposit information, and is on some thing about how they have to wait for verification? Bitch please, if the bank account isn't there, the bank wouldn't accept the transfer, and you'd know it instantly.

Give.

Us.

Our.

Money.

@rnmissionrun As @Arkandel says there's a lot of RP on Trek games that are not combat. People like to dive into the world, but the combat part actually turns away a lot of people because the system is often not conducive to the environment or not enjoyable or based on player skill rather than character skill.

I can see a lot of RP being had trying to run blockades, be neutral races trying to deal with a war, etc.

But the War itself gives focus to the game so it hopefully doesn't stagnate.

So somewhat linked to the show, but also a part of the history of the theme, I was thinking a game set during the klingon war (Yes I would use TNG or Motion Picture Klingons, I dislike the revamp, sue me). So you'd essentially have 3 factions: Starfleet, Klingons, and Independents.

I like the idea of putting it in the middle of a war, because there is a constant source of conflict to drive story, there are stories that can be told outside of the conflict. Of course we'd have to toss the idea of the spore drive and all that right out of the frying pan and do it as yet another alt timeline thing, but doing so would mean the future of the war was not predetermined.

Could be interesting.

I would not go as techy as say, ATS (Among the Stars) because that combat system is more determined by the player than the character which... seems weird to me for an RPG. I mean obviously there is some overlap, because the players tactics will matter and there's no way around that but it shouldn't be about player typing speed and math skills imho.

So would have to go with a different system entirely.

Any thoughts? I need to be doing something to scratch my sci-fi itch.

@roz Ah. Ok. I misunderstood.

@arkandel said in Table-top gadgets:

@ortallus That doesn't solve the issue of a centralized platform for campaign management though.

Roll20.net

Seriously, it's a pretty good tool for campaign management, dice, character sheets, etc.

It's also free.

So I learned in 7 days to die, at least in the random world I was playing in, that you can only go down to -57m before you hit the unbreakable bedrock... which... sucks for me cuz I found a place already -22m below sea level and was trying to dig down far enough the zed's couldn't sense my forge and such.

I still spend way to much time on Avorion though, I get to a certain point, over-extend and then end up starting over to try out new ship designs etc.

Older books, but, The Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny are definitely worth a read.

The Thomas Covenant series by Steven R. Donaldson is good too (and one of the many sources that Robert Jordan swiped idea sfrom)

The Bio of a Space Tyrant series by Piers Anthony is good (I expect most to have read the Incarnations of Immortality series by the same author at this point).

The idle code is not client side code. I need something client side or Comcast kills my connection, so it's got to be something I send, not something handled on server side.

Is there an idle code in place yet on Arx that allows for client side idle timers?

The Starfinder PDF's are still out there and very easily pirated. If that was their intention, it didn't work.

I am wistfully waiting for the time we can get cyberbreasts out of RIFT's, where you can inflate and deflate them at will. Ostensibly to make armor fit comfortably but still... want.

@bobotron When I am feeling particularly old school:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSffLmJ99PY

Finally got around to finishing the 4th season of Black Mirror, some of them were good, but not a lot of real shock and awe factor like some of the earlier season episodes. Still, glad to have seen it and will watch Season 5 when it comes.

The problem with original theme anything is that it can make it difficult for others to feel capable of helping to create the story and the world. With most published games, everyone has a common ground to go on, and knows what may or may not be allowed just by virtue of how in depth the setting is. If you are creating your own setting you /have/ to have enough detail for people to feel that they know the world, have a grasp of it, and are comfortable with telling their own stories in it.

It's a tricky thing to balance, and it is doubly hard when so many games are just unwilling to allow the players any agency and ability to change anything.

That said, I love sci fi. I don't actually feel Star Wars is Sci Fi that much because there is to many magic elements to it (The Force) where as with Star Trek, most games seem to large to really have much an impact on, or the game runners simply do not allow things to go off their carefully planned rails.

I would love an original themed sci fi game, but, you have to keep it fairly small in setting with the possibility of one offs that can impact things.

Something like... a colony ship using some sort of FTL drive system that goes out of wack, nobody really knows how to fix it for whatever reason (The right techies are still in hypersleep, they don't have the parts for the type of damage, the damage makes the room inaccessible, something...) Maybe the FTL system makes hops and has to recharge, so you have breaks in the jumps, and sometimes there are alien worlds or alien wrecks, or who knows what outside and you've got to scavenge for supplies. People can try alternate means to try and get to the engine to get it fixed, etc.

That way people can have their PrP's, they might even be able to fix the bloody ship, who knows, maybe it just /stops/ and the people are in unknown space, maybe a whole other galaxy, maybe in dark space...

Anyways the setting needs to allow for people to tell their own stories, and still feel engaged in the setting so that it doesn't taper off and die without constant staff storytelling.

@ganymede You were super awesome, those Bloodlines look pretty neat.