Best posts made by mietze

@Lilli

BITN does have a different groove, at least that I've seen. Maybe it's the elimination of supernatural splat pissing contests, or cross sphere dangerousness where you never know when people are going to like that or think it's an excuse to PK or what. I've not spent a lot of time in the OOC room so I don't know how "bad" it is, but generally when I've said somthng on pub channel (!!!!) I normally get at least 1 nibble that's not from someone who knows me! I've also seen a bigger mix of grim and humor AND grim humor than I've seen in a long time, and that makes me very very happy.

I love srs bsns stories, but my main play for the last two almost three years has been /vampire/. So--it's nice to play things that can shift over into something pretty funny (to me, I don't know if other players appreciate my version of funny) AND serious, as the situation/adrenaline merits.

Pneumonia Sucks. Pneumonia in the goddamn fucking summer sucks. Having to give up my sweet lucrative easy $$$$$$$$ delivering for my favorite Amazon warehouse after prime day for the rest of this week/end makes me wanna cry.

Also big gun antibiotics make me feel like shit/ting but I'm grateful.

I think if used as intended, social skills do add a lot of fun to the game. They are very useful in gmed scenes where the runner is willing to allow them to be used (rather than just combat for everything). They can be used to reclaim player agency as well by the non-combat PC (when someone wants to kill/attack them which will remove them from play, they can mitigate some of that by talking the person down, making it just a beating instead of the PK.) Since presumably the PC doesn't want to die/be forced physically into that box/ect.)

In order to support social skills to their fullest potential though I think its probably important to use them as intended--mostly on NPCs or against organizations not individuals (I think combat skills should be limited mostly to NPCs too.)

Eliminating personal PVP solves a lot of the problems.

I smoked a joint for my 40th birthday, but that is the extent of my recreational non-alcohol drug use, unless you count diet coke. I've never gotten high from the edibles I've tried since, though they do make me just go to sleep after a certain point. I think I'm just one of those un-fun weird metabolizers of substances where I don't get high. The only think that remotely has made me feel high at all is prednisone. I'm always excited to get the 10 day course around my first bad upper respiratory infection of the season (those trigger my asthma/reactive airway, which is why I get the prednisone), since I know that if I make a list of all the special organizing/house cleaning projects that I've wanted to do but haven't made the time for and post it on my bulletin board, I will get them done pretty much in the first 48 hours on the drug. Of course, I also won't sleep for 48 hours either, but I'm usually cheerful and happy until I crash!

It almost (almost) makes me wish that diet pills/dexatrim/speed was still available OTC, for when I need to get more housework projects done. I guess calling that shit Mommy's Little Helpers in the olden days was the real deal.

Hubby says mushrooms are like pot like whoa. (For those of you who know him, no that's not a verbatim quote, just my paraphrase). If shrooms actually tasted like mushrooms I would be all over that shit at least once, but sadly I guess they don't really taste like anything, because unless you are stupid, you're getting just a little bit.

@ganymede I agree. I understand the compulsion many folks have to resist learning anything new for systems they're familiar with but...2.0 has so many upgrades that reward people for collaborative play, who make things a little more interesting than input/output dice, it's a shame that people knee jerk hate it.

I love the investigations/doors/chase/quick combat stuff. It's really useful and fun once you get to know it. I know the quick combat stuff has allowed me to run scenes that are super exciting and where the PCs actually get to be the supernatural badasses they are against normies without tying everyone down to hours of regular combat where everyone is exhausted before we get to the good stuff.

Mostly American elections are about disenfranchising people, either by laws, funding (not funding polling places in poor/urban/college areas and not funding vote by mail), or propaganda ("It doesn't matter if you vote or not, it never makes a difference).

That is one of the reasons why I've enjoyed the open sheet games I've been on, actually. It's like a little challenge to me as a RPer all on its own. Especially when the person has great stats for social stuff or motivational stuff or whatever, but their RP isn't to my personal taste. It's been fun trying to tease out at least one thing in their pose/scene that I-player can have my PC seize on for a more positive reaction.

You know the funny thing is though, that when I do that, it's fun to see how excited the other player gets about it. I guess this shit is easier when you really like to make other players feel good about the interaction, whatever it might be. I've also seen people improve greatly over time once they get more comfortable with me as a player too, knowing that I won't mock or make fun of them oocly and will respond to them as if they had posed their action (which they are entitled to/it's appropriate) in a way that spoke to my PC organically. A lot of people pick up on that also, and I find I'll get back over time what I complement in my poses, so it becomes enjoyable for me too, if I'm willing to give that player a chance.

I might also suggest (only from my observations of the last werewolf sphere I was in) that you consider maybe an additional WW ST, and maybe as packs develop/take territories, you might want to consider some territory/pack based scenes too. Vampire has the advantage of being supportive of people interacting with each other a lot, either as adversaries or as allies, you have multigroup membership (clan and cov) automatically. Werewolf is so pack based, even by design, sometimes there's not a whole lot of "general" stuff that's really going to draw people in. (Depends on the people too maybe). I think it really could be valuable to divvy up kinds of stories too. Spirit threats? Existential threats? Ect.

I messed up my knee out on a delivery last night, partially because I'm a klutz and partially because people seem to have aversions to turning on their goddamn fucking porch light even though they scheduled the time for the delivery and know I'm coming.

I have hyper mobile joints so sometimes it's hard to tell if something is just out of alignment and I have to pop it back in (I do this with the bones in my feet and my hips all the time) but nope I really did do something to it and it hurts.

Turn on your porch lights and fix broken stairs, assholes! And while you're at it, bother to light or at least make visible your address marker!

This whole discussion is about how/if to incorporate social skills into a mush where the system being used heavily relies upon them.

Using or adapting the system that has already been written to help with this, and reflects a player's desire for agency but also the risk that comes from playing a dice-rolling game seems like a no brainer.

I actually don't think there are really super understandable reasons for being knee jerk resistant to this idea of doing this, IF you want to play on a game that is not full consent. Hell even if you ENJOY full consent (as I have very much so) you still need to talk/negotiate with the other player. And if you never want to talk to another person, then why complain about the dice compelling you to just give in?

We are discussing this because of the nature of WoD themes and storylines being not so black and white, because theres a lot of flexibility in what the skills can do (by design), and because there are a lot of misunderstandings that crop up because of that.

Being willing to discuss/roll/resolve is already in the system. You can customize the bells and whistles so that it is less overwhelming for people who dont handle newness well.

And yeah, maybe I just has shitty GMs in my tt experience but I have indeed told them I wanted to sneak past a guard, gotten info about the set up of the area, then used that info to make my pitch, rolled, and resolved. It made it fun and I got to be creative, esp if it was a super hard situation. I'm hard pressed to think of any tt session, from high school D&D to present where I didn't discuss things with my GM, and where I didn't reap rewards for doing so.

I think too much of the time labels aren't really specific. Antagonist/not-nice covers a huge swath of things.

I find verbally aggressive asshole PCs to be entertaining, if they players are able to deal with being treated like an asshole/responses in kind ICly. (Which is, IME,definitely NOT a given. Even with a warning label about how they're such an asshole!). Physically aggressive PCs are fine with me to, but I'm a little careful with that now, because I dislike white knights who use every situation to jump in and "defend" someone before they have a chance to do so themselves or even get to play with the aggressor (one way that protagonist pc players in particular can become very ME ME ME ME scene dominators, actually!). Sexually aggressive PCs I'm very leery of. Not because I'm opposed to that (I'm neutral) but people who engage in rape drama on either end, or who need an audience for it, IME have been very problematic players in general. Not to say that I think everyone is, it just seems to be a strong majority, so I prefer to smile and nod around that. Insane/Extremely impulsive PCs can be okay and fun, as long as they don't OOCly freak the fuck out when ICly my PC declines to include them in sensitive/exacting stuff. (Also, unfortunately, not a given. Sometimes chaos is cool, but wanting sometimes there not to be chaos or escalation during an important mission is also a reasonable thing too, I think.) Budding roses who are really from the bottom barrel of onions are also kind of meh to me. (The people who desperately want you to peel back the layers of their PC because they're so complex and rewarding and won't it be enriching--but instead it's all about them and it's a little boring, and you'd better not ask for reciprocation, and instead of a complicated and wonderful story it's just kind of soggy/moldy and isn't good for much but to toss in the compost).

The Korean spa near me. I wish I could afford to go weekly. A day of hydrotherapy and sauna-like stuff, along with getting the first layer of my skin scrubbed off by a stern auntie = awesome soft skin and relaxation. Also 5 hours more or less by myself while hanging out there!

If you want to retain agency and be able to put things in a direction that makes things comfortable for you, then I think by necessity you are going to also have to do some work other than batting down someone else's perfectly reasonable roll and success with a "nah, that just doesn't work for me." Doesnt that other play partner have just as much need for feeling validated and comfortable?

I do not think a prerequisite for having social skills should be that the player is psychic. But that can be how they are treated like they should be otherwise "well you just didn't convince me oocly."

I guess if you wanted to eliminate all need for player discussion/negotiation, you could have buyable abilities that give you social immunity from certain applications that are a hot button/sore spot for the player. ("I can never be convinced to follow someone else's suggestion about my business." "I can never be charmed into giving a favor or discount." "Oratory dice have no effect on my willingness to be moved by a political speech." Usually sexual situations are off the table for rolling, as they should be.)

I don't want to play, but I think this could be a really fun thing, and I encourage you to develop it further/give it a try. I do think there's a pool of people who would be very interested.

Weird. In our area at this point we're using votebuilder to target our calls/texts specifically to people who have not returned ballots. (we are a 100 percent mail-in state) It really helps with preventing volunteer burnout.

And as a player my top goal is to have everyone, win or lose, come away with feeling like they got to enjoy their character's interaction with mine. I have never ever had a player NOT respond to my interest in their PC (assuming they has agreed to RP with me specifically, I'm not talking about the people in a scene who are clearly interested in a specific person(s) and all else are window dressing...that's clearly not personal at all and not really a fair comparison). Wanting to work with someone to find a resolution that reflects success on a roll but doesn't totally destroy their ooc enjoyment of the interaction is a tool towards that end. I would much rather do that than roll dice, have them say nothing, and then find out later that they felt I "destroyed their PC."

Don't be dense. You know exactly what I'm talking about. You may very well enjoy that behavior, but yeah. Doing stuff like that is super unnecessary. Especially when there has been ample time for preparation.

I was skeptical of all mail in voting, but now (especially after 2 years of being a certified elections observer and literally having an open door to all parts of the process including the commissioners meetings) I am a believer in it. But its not cheap. King County WA has well over a million registered voters and a budget to match that scale. I think most elections municipalities dont.