Posts made by Lithium

@Miss-Demeanor Someone is apparently disbelieving that some of us have had problems there. So much so that simple comments of what happened to them get downvoted. Go figure. Case of to much invested maybe.

IF I had to do it on Penn I'd probably just dig two grids, and have an attribute that linked them together. So the +step code would transport you to the linked room if you succeeded on the roll.

@tangent Kudo's for putting it in a different time zone. To bad it's going to be the same mess of FC's > OC's that all these games turn into.

@Miss-Demeanor said in The 100: The Mush:

@ixokai I can say that the uncanny knack to run into all the antagonism ICly is a LARGE part of why I left the game. I have a stressful enough RL, I don't need my every interaction in a game to be some shit-slinging hatefest. There's 'conflict between PCs' and there's 'I knew it, I'm surrounded by assholes!'. When you can't step into a scene without SOMEONE going batshit insane over whatever, its no longer any fun to play a character. I was told staff would be 'monitoring' this behavior, but I left long before they started doing anything about it. And maybe my tolerance level is just running low, but given the bent of the current conversation, it looks more like my prediction was right and staff are far less likely to say anything while they're getting to have fun with what they want. Its that whole 'well I'm not having any problems, so I don't understand why you're upset' thing. What you're comfortable with and what someone else is comfortable with could be wildly different things. And hey, if you're running a game largely for your own preferences, that's your prerogative. But you should make that absolutely crystal clear from the get-go, not just shrug and wonder why people aren't having as much fun as you are.

This is exactly why I left. I tried to play a decent person and all I got were death threats, and one person saying I was attacking them oocly for oocly explaining my character didn't like bullies. Go figure.

You wouldn't have to worry about Shadow descs anyways because of the fluid nature of the Shadow in nWoD/CoD. Instead of doing a fully formed grid the person running the scene would know what alterations would need to be made in the Shadow in order to fit the mood, tone, and theme of the location at that specific time.

The only thing about Victorian/Dark Ages is that from what I have seen in the past they don't tend to take off because of the inherent sexism and politics of the era so you'd need to consider that as well, it can drive off some players.

I've found that 'static' umbra descs are really the wrong way to go, especially with nWoD/CoD since the umbra is so fluid based on the reality of the situation. The right /people/ in the area can swing the umbra description based on moods etc.

So if I were to do a nWoD/CoD umbra system I'd probably just use anywhere rooms, or have staff alter the desc of the room in the scene set, it's much easier to get what you want without having to worry about static anything. Also, with the way the Umbra has changed, it's a lot easier to get stuff shoved up your tailpipe if you just try to hang out in the umbra all the time and be a spy or whatever, so there's that too.

@ThatGuyThere See this right here is a problem. If I am able to throw 100 tons around without a problem, there shouldn't be any /swinginess/ when I connect. It should do an immense amount of force on impact and there shouldn't be a feel of 'anything can happen' in super hero's in my opinion. If 'anything' can happen, then what is the point of having super powers if they end up being worthless due to a swingy dice system just screwing you over all the time?

There is /nothing/ more frustrating than standing around and doing nothing because the dice have decided your highly skilled or highly powerful character simply cannot connect at all.

We see this a lot in RIFT's and such systems as well, because your skills are all percentile based but they start off so low like a 30% chance of success or thereabouts that it is not remotely consistent at all.

Sure you can miss a lot on a bell curve too if luck is against you, but overall it's a much smoother experience than with a d20 (as my poor half-orc cleric in 5E can tell you. +6 to hit at level 1 and she's missed 90% of the time due to d20 variance).

Mystique was in charge of nasty mutants for a long time in X-Men, when she was leading The Blob and such around before the whole Death of Destiny plot so it's not even unfaithful that Mystique was well known. The thing about Mystique is that you could know she's out there, and leading these bads, but you don't know where she is, or /who/ she is, at any given moment which is what made her so powerful.

This reminds me of a couple system ideas I've been working on instead of trying to convert a table top system to an unrelated environment.

My first idea was to have dice cancel each other out, like if person 1 has 8 dice to attack and person 2 has 5 dice to defend then person 1 has only 3 dice to roll on attack against person 2 in normal situations.

My second idea was using d6's where your 'dodge' skill (or equivalent) would determine the target number to being hit. So if you had a 5 dodge skill then they'd need to roll 5's and 6's to hit on a d6. The only problem with this is having 1 in a skill was useless so I changed it so that you had to roll /higher/ than the skill. Still doesn't fix the problem of a 1 skill being pretty much crap. Still toying around with this idea as it's clearly not ready and needs modification.

The third idea I had was to go with a percentile based system where each point in stat + skill combinations equated to 10% chance to succeed, which was reduced by environmental factors, and your opponents defense stat + skill combinations. So if you had a 4 skill + a 3 attribute you'd have a base 70% chance for success. If the target had 3 skill + 3 attribute it'd be reduced to a base of 10%.

The problem with this is that it'd drag out combats to an insane degree for equally skilled combatants so this too needs further tweaking.

The other way to use percentile is to just have a chart. A few games back in the day were percentile based and used a chart to determine whether or not you hit or missed based on the weapon, range, and skill of the shooter. This can work, but if you start using a chart, and then start getting into the minutiae of it based on range, environment, cover, etc it's a lot of charts and math which some people do not enjoy.

Which is why I am leaning on a static TN 5 on a d6 for my new system with counteracting dice pools reducing to a minimum of 1. This works for both hit and damage so there is a variety of ways to defend, dodge, or armor, and both are equally effective over all.

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.

@Apos Welcome to the 'Entitled'. A class of 'Player' who believes the 'Player' is superior to every other aspect of the game, and thus should be worshiped. They feel the game should revolve around /their/ ideas, and to hell with staff or theme or anyone else who doesn't share their opinion.

They tend to travel in packs, so as to throw their weight around, and try to 'ruin' games as soon as things don't go their way.

@Wretched There is a difference between "Wrongfun" and "Not following the Rules" or "Not following the Theme". A game generally has a set theme, that theme enforces a set of rules by which everyone has to follow in order for the game to follow a reasonable path. The part that people tend to forget is this:

Not all games are meant for all character types.

Not following the rules on Wyrd (the example used above) is to me just as egregious a problem as trying to app a Space Marine in a low fantasy setting.

When you make a game world it has a theme that needs to be followed to be part of the game world, such as: No guns, No space ships, No time travel, No Magic, No whatever. People need to follow that in order to be a part of the theme of the game.

I see this a lot on roll20 and D&D games, people wanting to app special snowflake races and classes that aren't part of the main books even when the DM says: I am only allowing stuff out of the players handbook.

Honestly, if a prospective player can't be assed to follow the rules that are clearly written then imho they don't need to be playing on the game. Which segue's into another gaming 'truth':

Not all games are going to be fun for everyone.

If a game doesn't match up with a players idea of 'fun' then the game isn't meant for them and they should be reasonable about that fact and either try and find a game that does match their idea of fun or try and come up with a fun character that /does/ fit the world.

Right now I am /fiending/ for a crunchy Super Hero game. I'd love a game based off Hero System, Savage Worlds, Aberrant, DC (Mayfair games version) or the like but they are few and far between. The only HERO system game I know of has jumped the shark severely, the only Aberrant game I know of has a tiny player base and the XP is very fast so new players literally cannot compete, the others don't exist to my knowledge. So I am left with trying to find something that works for me on those games that do exist, or not playing.

@surreality I played on GhostWheel MOO briefly, it's part of why I have never seriously looked at MOO as a code base because the commands, system, and everything else was (at the time) so counter intuitive that I couldn't really grok it.

All I care about is furthering and engaging with the story.

Give me something to respond to and keep the story going or it's time to end the RP as it's not going anywhere at that point.

Every other factor is of much less importance.

I am not a grammar nazi, if I can understand it then it's all good.

I am not a spelling nazi. We all make mistakes.

The only other factor that 'matters' to me is length of time between poses. If I am falling asleep because you're taking more than 15 minutes to pose, then I am probably not going to stick around for much longer. I have limited time. Don't abuse it.

I hate the idea of RP'ing before a character is approved because I hate the idea of retcons. Retcons are always a worse case scenario for me, I'd much rather just nuke the problem person/character after the fact and move on while saying: No more of this.

There are a number of games that allow RP'ing before approval and I think it's kind of silly, why would you be RP'ing when you don't even know if your character is going to be approved? Maybe it will without any changes, but you don't know that. Maybe there's a core or even a small element to your character that gets denied or need to be changed and then the character plays totally differently?

That kind of RP is like... Fanfic.

@thebird I am allergic to everything. The only places I find respite, is high desert like Arizona and parts of Nevada.

Otherwise, allergies destroy me year round there's always /something/ blooming that my body hates.

@Admiral Tire bomb can climb walls too, but it dies easy if people are smart enough to shoot it.

This almost does make me want to make a persistent NeverWinter Nights World and tie it to a MUSH use the MUSH for RP, but all combat and leveling and such happens in the game.

Sure it's a separation of things but really, you can even RP in the game if you really want to.

@Roz I always try to schedule my meetings for fucking, but Cocaine is a hell of a drug.

My only complaint with the way the system seemed to work on the couple games I played it, was that background skills seemed useless unless they were ranked higher than the action skill in question.

Skills default to action skills (at least on the most recent game I played on that used FS3) so buying a background skill was silly unless it was /higher/ than the default action skill.

This to me meant backgrounds were generally a waste of time.

For example: I could buy my Psychic action skill say at level 5, then I would have to buy individual background skills for my psychic abilities at higher than 5, or else I'd be better off just using my default psychic skill.

It seemed incredibly easy to nerf yourself at chargen, when you theoretically should be making yourself /better/ by having the specialized knowledge a background skill would give.

For a more specific example: Examine a 'Melee' action skill, which handled all weapons in h2h combat. So you could purchase that skill at a high level and have high ability with every weapon (Say your character is a gladiator which has to be good with every weapon) but then you want to specialize in the net and trident, so you take Net & Trident as a background skill. In order to actually be better with net and trident, you have to take that background skill at a higher level than Melee.

So backgrounds hurt more than they help in most situations.