Best posts made by Misadventure

Gumshoe doesn't guarantee you will solve anything. It guarantees you won't miss the necessary clues to enable you to make decision on your courses of action, be that to solve a mystery, or expanding the model, approach the negotiations table with the most pertinent facts, or decide on how to best wage a war given the current situations.

The particular model GUMSHOE has breaks the typical rolls run everything approach many games have. This "universal approach" isn't, there are many many ways players and GMs modify that approach to suit the actual results they want. Allowing only one roll or many, one chance to find info, or many, requiring rolls to interpret something or not, allowing player decisions to overrule (or not) what the dice say, the ways to customize a roll are endless. Many weigh the results towards many rolls to fail, or many rolls to succeed without realizing it.

If you are trying to break the usual way the game system runs things, you usually look at what the players do that is FUN, engaging, and that enables RP at whatever level (from in character acting through narrative to basic table talk description of game mechanics choices) and focus on getting to that, and making IT more important.

If you want a pure sim, you will end up with the muddy results of reality, and a lot of dead ends and unresolved events, and you'll get to play through every unrewarding hour of it. I love nodding to those realities, but I want to get to the stuff that is interesting for my players and I.

There is a page in Powers: Who Killed RetroGirl? that shows frame after frame of legwork. It gives the nod, then the story moves on. That's what Gumshoe is trying to, except instead of summary of many non-interesting but necessary events, it's about moving quickly through the parts that won't lead to interesting stuff in a game system.

Imagine making an alertness check, a perception check, and empathy checks every single turn of a game to represent your actual perception of everything. Could lead to awesome moments, but most likely it leads to a million rolls we fear are needed, but never go anywhere. Best to roll when the situation is complex, more complex than it appears, or MAYBE when it might highlight your characters shortcomings (like they hate the Irish).

8.1 has a desktop you can put things on.

Some day I will try to remake Mage into a more modern version of Ars Magica, with similar Orders and junk so they can be played along side the other folks without dominating.

(Or I'll work on my Victorian Steam Romance game)

That sort of link list would be awesome to see in ads for new places.

Is it a horcrux?

Actually, I think it is in part the game material. Mage is at the pinnacle of the "let me explain the cosmos to you" in the game rules. No one has a better understanding than they can. Players run with that, and the ability to sense and analyze and so on. Meanwhile others feel like they've just been outclassed.

I'd really like to see some "mysteries" where there is just little a mage can do about certain things.

EG a Sin-Eater should have some relationship, some innate thing, some capacity relating to death that no mage can touch, or even understand via magic.

But he has wings!

Maybe I am being dumb, and since I am not much of a Windows user, that may be why I don't notice whatever it is that is giving you trouble. But I work from my 8.1 desktop, have shortcuts, files and folders, etc on it.

By which I mean it's available, and probably some 8.1 genius here can help with anything more complicated than that.

@Wizz
What some writer says about their game anyplace other than in the game text isn't going to help most folks feel differently about mage. I mostly agree with what you're saying, but player psychology is the issue. As an example, while Sin-eaters certainly seem like they should know more about Death, it has no way to be displayed, and the book actually does well saying that it remains even a wonderful mystery to them.Werewolves certainly known more about being part spirit and the players are enabled by the lore to be aware of the tribes and the powers they have, and even to have heard many many tales of actually possible events about how to be successful with spirits, yet the players still feel the Mage with Spirit outclasses them.

It takes something concrete to help players out. Maybe Sin-Eaters can help the dead along way way more effectively than any mage. Maybe trying to interfere with the Death related aspects of a Sin-Eater is at a hard penalty that starts off tough, and gets downright impossible the higher their Synergy (like -5 or -Synergy, whichever is higher, and attach some auto Paradox or whatever to it). That sort of things goes a long way to helping players feel like it is intended that as agents and participants in something that is innately beyond human gives them an edge in that area.

To me, player attitudes and confidence is the issue that was described, not just lack of understanding of the product, and thats the issue I think could be easier to fix.

Whenever I contemplate making a game, it's always to try out something I don't think has been done. An angle on player interactions, on interaction with the setting (like the Off Screen System from .. uh ... that place), or the desire to see a new setting in play (Yay swashbuckling by night).

I love that due to my job I get points for tracking meals, sleep, and steps, and those points convert to dollars to counter medical care costs beyond what insurance covers. My wife and I racked up over $400 last year, which isn't a huge amount but made it worthwhile.

She wins at steps, I win at sleeping.

@Arkandel Yes, dealing with stress, be it being late to work, or not having enough nutritious food to allow your children to grow healthy and strong, is all a part of surviving.

However, my point was that you can't just decide that stress won't affect you. You can't decide that it won't affect your health. Anonymous harassment, and indirect harassment, has a reduced stress cost to the harasser, and so it feeds directly into a cost/benefit behavior where abuse is dolled out freely. As people often say, you wouldn't say that to my face, or in front of your family. Why, the social costs are back in place. The cost of a fist in the face is back in place. Just having to speak up and say the words is back up in place.

You can take the stance that whatever is common or typical, or even evolutionarily advantageous (see rape, cheating, theft, violence, stressing) behavior for humans is acceptable, my view of human behavior is too dark to not strive for better.

Article on bullying as an evolutionary strategy

Oh the terrible attempts at biological justifications.

Here is the story of how I switched from soda to iced tea:

My friends would fgo t the UTC Mall here in La Jolla for many reasons, one being the Indian take out place run by this old Indian guy who was very nice. One day we went, and he had no large cups anymore. He explained that he did not mind if we went elsewhere to get a large soda, but he couldn't in good conscience sell that much soda at once to someone.

For no real reason beyond his thoughtfulness, I decided to switch to plain iced tea after that. My wife is a bad influence, and wants Coke Zero in the house for a mixer, but otherwise its now in the category of a desert drink we may get.

Don't think it helped, but it did get me off the stuff. Cold brew ice tea bags also help a lot at work.

No one makes you read their posts, or read this forum. No one is claiming a right to your time.

Block would be convenient. Unless there is something we users could do to get that function installed, this is just whining that is wasting my time.

This is a sassy group.
Getting helpful comments is much like wrangling cats.
Sometimes you may feel you are being judged.

How credit cards work.

Not just abusable, but limiting of what is communicated. If it could turn off someones posting privileges, then all a down vote says is "You shouldn't be posting here."

I like to use it to say "Poor argument." or "You're being a jerk." or "Hello Arkandel"

So this is a simulation.

My concern: Between 3-6 million Democrats did not vote or did not vote Democrat in 2016 when compared to 2012.