Posts made by Lithium

This idea has worked in the past on several occasions, but what makes or breaks you here is what system you are using.

If the system is to complex then you have a hard barrier of entry (See Champions MUSH and other Hero System Games).

If the system is to rules lite (IMHO FS3 falls into this) then everything is to homogenized and there's nothing really differentiating people except for flavor text when it comes to viability (The old if everybody is super, nobody is thing).

If I were to do another one (I coded up an Aberrant Cgen once) I would probably use something like Strands of Fate or something like that.

Fate can be made fairly crunchy while still being simple enough.

Used to hate Fate but it's grown on me.

It might also be worth doing to use say Marvel or DC and just have like a Night of Long Knives where /every/ FC is wiped out never to return... then how does the world react to the Chaos? Who steps up to fill the shoes?

@Ghost said in We Need a Game Set In the Roman Empire.:

@Julia-Cornelia said in We Need a Game Set In the Roman Empire.:

As an aside, I'm glad we've reached that point in MU*ing where we can finally start calling people out for being misogynistic

I'm sympathetic. I've occasionally rolled up female characters because the character just reads better to me as a female. I approached MU as a writing experience, and I'm not much into TS.

Every female character I have rolled up has resulted in a truckload of uninitiated, unsolicited creeper flirtation and nagging, pressuring, etc. I've also ran into situations where I got the impression that my char was being taken less seriously due to alpha male on scene needing to own the dominant role.

Oh. Yeah. There's misogyny.

Happens /all/ the time.

And if you try to play a woman who isn't a submissive sex-kitten then you get even worse.

I was into this, until you said FS3. Not that it matters, my playtimes are horrible when it comes to being involved in anything. I don't even get home from work until around 1AM EST.

All I care about, is that someone gives me something to roleplay with.

Pose length doesn't matter, so long as the person is engaged in the scene and furthering RP.

Give me something to play off of and I am good. In the right situation someone shaking their head, or making a noncommital(sic) sound can still further RP.

But...

People can write huge poses that add nothing. They can write small poses that add nothing.

Both of these are equally frustrating.

@Ganymede AC2's have min range, AC-5 does not.

@Ganymede , @Jaded :

Apparently my sarcasm was not detected even when I mentioned the TV head.

When the ShadowHawk came out though, in the original printing of the game it didn't do badly.

The original Jenner has shit armor and would actually be fucked up by a ShadowHawk, let alone getting in close enough for good medium laser range means that if the Jenner lost initiative it would be on the defensive and running from those 11 point kicks that would tear the Jenner's leg off.

For the original rules, 5/8/3 movement was not bad at all, and even if the jenner ran away (11 speed at a run) it couldn't outrun the shadowhawk's ac 5 or lrm's fast enough to not suffer significant damage.

So in the role of harasser and light hunter, it actually does pretty well.

The ShadowHawk doesn't hold up against anything bigger than it is though, at all. Even comparable mechs (Griffon's and Wolverines) are generally better armed and armored than the ShadowHawk and would take it down in the end.

Part of the allure of those original mech's though was that nothing was really built optimally. Everything had heat issues if you weren't careful, everything had strengths and weaknesses.

Not saying I like the ShadowHawk, I still feel it is a shit mech, but if played right and /not/ part of a vacuum it's weight can still be felt on the battle field.

BattleTech is very much team oriented and tactical in it's playstyle. As bad as it is, the ShadowHawk can still be useful... and it /sucks/.

Even the Griffin had a serious problem if you could get under it's guns, a standard PPC and LRM 10 are not good at extremely close range so it's even more bait to a light mech for example and it had heat issues if it popped off the PPC every turn and jumped or also fired the LRM's.

Also... Machine Guns are horrible in BattleTech, even half a ton of ammo and you are destroyed if it gets hit no matter where it's located pre-case. Flamers are also not good even if you use the heat transference rules because you generate more heat than you give.

Yes, they are nightmares against infantry but, honestly... it is rare that traditional infantry threatens a mech.

Also: Generating crits? Every weapon generates crits at the same rate in BT. If anything, missiles are even better for crit hunting due to amount of hits generated.

There's a fair few poorly designed old style mech's, but the ShadowHawk isn't that bad...

Just Kidding, it has a fucking CRT television for a head.

It sucks.

The ShadowHawk does do one thing well though, it harasses at all ranges. The LRM and AC-5 have good range, while the medium laser and the SRM has short range.

The shadow Hawk looks like junk in a vacuum admittedly but on the game board it has good use due to it's mobility and ability to put damage downrange at any engagement range.

Not a lot of damage but some... which is better than none.

Against lights and other mediums it can be effective due to a lack of armor on it's enemies as well but...

Yeah that's a suck mech. It can be saved through customization however. Remove the SRM-2 and add 2 medium lasers and it gets much more powerful.

As a long term ST/GM/DM since the mid 80's, the best advice I can say is 'Don't have an ending.' This goes counter to what other people are saying but, in my opinion the story should go as long as the players and the ST are having fun. Don't think of an ending, don't rail road the players, don't have a fixed direction. Let the story flow as the players direct it.

Sometimes this means giving up some agency but in my mind an ST is a facilitator not a dictator. They help the stories, they provide the back drop, but the stories are written by the players themselves.

The best games I've ever had, I came up with the introduction and then let the players go from there, what they decided to do, determined where the story went. Admittedly this means it is difficult for new ST's who are not used to running off the cuff but it is without a doubt, the story that the players feel the most invested in because it is their own story.

So my advice is this: Be flexible, be relaxed, if the story goes 'off the rails' let it go off the rails, let it go whatever direction the players are directing it because it will be the most fun for them along the way. It is /their/ story, not your own, and they will be more engaged in it thusly.

@GangOfDolls Last time I looked it was on a bit of an upswing but I don't play there anymore since they gutted my character for no good reason, I literally have zero ways of advancing since they took refinement out and I was playing a wizard.

Sure I can buy stunts or increase my fate pool but really... I would have liked to eventually learn all 5 evocations, maybe create some better focus items, etc.

I am coding standard Fate/DFRPG for the game I am working on. Aspects are powerful enough already, they don't need to be more powerful like the 'Accelerated' rules make them imho.

@Ganymede That's a Sister of Battle, not a Chaplain, but still an awesome picture.

I'd like to see a base of villain npc's where you could 'rent' them for your plots. That might be interesting, I know on Horizons (My Dresden/Big Trouble in Little China game) I have a board that is precisely engineered for plot threads and story arcs that people might want to RP or run scenes about to make fun for themselves that is still connected to the game.

I work a lot, 50 hours a week, so I won't have time to hand hold all the players on the game. I will need staff to help, I know this, but I will also need the players to be willing to make fun for themselves as well and I want to facilitate that.

I am coding up a sort of reverse events thing where I am going to put up story threads and scenes I would like ran for the players, people can only take one at a time, must be open to the game, etc.

Back on point though, I think it would be kinda neat if villains could be puppeted and then put back on the shelf until they break out of prison again.

Every time I've seen villain's played as PC's it's like they have a pathological need to 'win'. They have preset paths they want their RP to go down, to tell their villain story, and there's no room for any sort of surprise or any of the PC's idea's of what they want to do.

It takes a special breed to play a villain right imho, and most of the time opening them up to PC's makes people get invested in them /as/ regular PC's and let's face it, most people don't like to lose.

That is what the villains are for when it comes down to it, they are there to eventually be brought down but not necessarily in every fight.

I've ran into General Zod's who literally refuse to lose, will cheat and play powers not on their sheet, and refuse to let people write anything other than Zod destroying or killing people.

This kind of thing can really make it pointless to try and go up against the villains and ruin the mood of the game.

Note: I am not saying Villains should never 'win' any battles, but between scheduling issues, continuity issues, and what I mentioned above... villains as PC's can really be a dampener on things.

At least in my opinion.

That's one reason why I've always felt that villains work best as NPC's but, I also think that putting them only in the hands of staff isn't a good idea either. There needs to be a stable of villains for people to use as plot npc's to write stories for people too as staff, on most games, do not have the presence to run stuff for everyone's timetable.

I've taken in people before, and I've been taken in. It can be a mixed bag but can make a very big difference.

If I had the space I'd probably be willing to take someone in but, I don't... in fact I am nailing down some job experience here before buying another house down in Florida this time.

But good on people who are willing to help others out.

The Santa Clarita Diet on Netflix is fucking fabulous.

I love it.

So much fun.

Also looking forwards to Iron Fist and the Defenders.

@Jaded The intro was definitely not clan based game play, was a Shadow Hawk, 400 year old mech so I'd take that with a grain of salt.

Now if the big baddies were clan, I'm fine with that.

But yes, Hairbrained is an awesome company, does good games. I'm waiting for the beta to come in March, I backed it at the 50$ level.

Personally I am just waiting for Hairbrained Schemes BattleTech Game. I am lukewarm about MechWarrior 5 that Piranha is doing though, we'll have to see how the story goes with that one. Could be good.

I'm also looking forwards to ME: Andromeda, got me a 1060 cuz my old 580 GTX finally died... was a good card with an aftermarket cooler on it.

As for FF Music from way back when: This is my favorite: here

Very sad to see you go, was looking forwards to working with you on my Big Trouble in Little China game (Which is taking shape). If you ever feel like sneaking on once it's finished, please feel free.

We'll miss you. Well, I'll miss you very much.

@Wizz RL kicking my ass, haven't had a lot of spare time to work on it. It's still a thing just... I have no eta.

@Ganymede I'll have to look into this FFG whatever that stands for and check it out.

If it's that good though it's probably a system that doesn't translate well to MU*'s.

I've run into a couple of systems that I really liked until they dropped something like, drawing cards out of the deck, onto the system