Hits points made more experienced characters have less chance to be taken out by a single boring blow. Meaning more hit points mean that blows land less well, or some fictional thing that still needs high level spells to heal what isn't a mortal wound.
Does the Off Screen System allow you to upgrade an areas economy, safety, stability, emergency services, quality of life, education etc? Be it a dystopic cyberpunk future or the Old West or the newly colonized island taken from the Fish-People, being able to upgrade the setting is something some folks like to do.
Really, it would depend on the time frame of play. If every month was a game year, sure you could rewrite the course of a region after 2-5 years. Pendragon relies on such a passage of time to move the Arthurian timeline along.
No earth based medieval for you then.
How do you feel about riding bears?
Mmm, children as chattel.
Owe the Church one son, owe my land one son, owe the troops a son. Pay for peace, pay for land, pay for trade with daughters.
You cannot sell me a bridge. It has no bearing on what I believe.
Likewise, you cannot claim conversations that were shared with more than just you.
I am certain you should stay away from any place that has such a policy.
You have said nothing to sway my opinion, and I have no interest in swaying yours.
I was talking with @Tempest.
Example: Rebel Agent 57 is a prisoner on the Death Star. It is destroyed by The Rebels. There is no player to track anything, so ... it's best to say that unlike everyone else aboard, Rebel Agent 57 survived the explosion. No one will be playing the character, because abandoned characters are sacrosanct. They sit there in space, not dying.
Example: Mr. Dalton inherits his family ice cream store. The player retires. When someone asks if there is an ice cream store on grid later ... what do you do? I'd say yep, it's there, run by Mr Dalton still. If you go in and rob the place, and freak out and kill him, he dies.
In both cases, it is argued that by doing anything, I am acting out of vengeance. Yeah, like I care about a vanished player that much.
@ThatGuyThere said:
Also with your logic of don't play under bad staff, give me an example of one game from any genre at any point in the history of this hobby that has not had at least one bad staffer?
So you are saying no one should play anywhere?
Inaccurate. I am saying that if you can't trust a ST to write off (death or otherwise) an abandoned (not on vacation, let's be sure about it) character, then you shouldn't trust them to fairly arbitrate or adjudicate your characters demise in onscreen action you are present for. You do not trust them.
My logic for playing under bad staff, and I have several times, is to understand that you have elected to continue to play, under threat that Bad Staff will be Bad Staff at you. If you can't stand the idea of playing under someone who has the power of death over your characters, then you should go. If you can say they may not go after you, so you can enjoy your time with friends and so on, you have made a moderately and risk assessing informed choice.
The extreme value of all bad staff comes from your own statement that all (amended to mostly all) Staff who would write off or kill your character would do so as an act of vengeance. I made the bridging statement that if you can't trust them to not kill for bad reasons offscreen, you can't trust them to kill for bad reasons onscreen. Ergo, you distrust Most Staff with offscreen deaths, so you should in turn distrust them with any onscreen death. You (or someone else) stated they could not, would not play under such a threat, so I applied that thinking to my own conclusion.
There are tons of points of disagreement available.
ALL Staffers who would kill/write off an abandoned PC would do so for bad reasons. (Yours)
ALL characters who have idled out or frozen are considered abandoned. (Many of us in this thread, by one definition or another).
ALL Staffers willing to kill you off offscreen would be willing and able to do so onscreen (Mine.)
ANY Staffer acting on such a policy would endanger ALL PCs, active or not.
ANY acting on such a policy completely removes any chance of enjoyment or play.
There are more.
I don't think most Staff are Bad Staff.
I don't think most Bad Staff have enough power to abuse players without oversight and remediation.
I don't think that any Bad Action by Bad Staff on a game removes the possibility of a good time.
I have left a game because I felt that Bad Actions from Bad Staff weren't going to be reviewed or remediated, and said Bad Actions were demoralizing and undermining to both short term and long term play.
Staff set idle out time. They decide that is a freeze equal to abandonment., THAT may be (to me it is) poor policy.
I stated my position on write outs, which was mostly about non-lethal ends. That is likewise my suggestion for anyone else trying to deal with the same concerns.
I haven't been sharp lately, I've been sharp today. Read most of my posts like I am stoned, and you are closer to my (admittedly unwritten) tone.
The objective truth still stands, how can you trust a staffer to kill you onscreen, but not off? Is it an objective truth that 100% of all such instances will be Staff acting on emotional ire instead of anything else? 100%, including that I myself am lying when i say it's not the case when I do it?
You don't have to like the policy, but you should address the questions raised.
100% of staff want to kill off Frozen characters, but those same staff are trustworthy with your characters in live play. That's the statement being made. Agree? Do you agree with that?
Again: you trust someone to kill you on screen, but not after you have GIVEN UP A CHARACTER?
With that attitude, you can't trust any staffer, ever, and you shouldn't play anywhere where there are staff, good or bad.
Wow, there were bad staff, somewhere. If you didn't trust them to kill you onscreen, then you shouldn't have played there. Don't play where you don't trust staff to not kill you randomly, or out of OOC spite. I'm sorry if you bought into a place then suffered under bad staff. Bad staff are bad staff, not Bad Staff had a policy, ergo that policy must be bad.
We aren't talking offscreen nukes. We are talking characters that are not going to be picked up again. I am personally all for allowing character storage, aka vacation. But if you are done, and can't bother to write yourself out in a sane fashion, someone should, as a service to those players left behind.
DON'T PLAY UNDER BAD STAFF, and if you do accept that you made it possible for them to be shitty to you by doing so.
Then you have trust issues.
You trust your staff with killing your PCs while you are actively playing them, but not once you've given them up? That is some fucked up shit right there.
Characters have an impact on setting. The more integrated with that setting they are, the more they need to be dealt with once the player gives up control. That can mean anything from being a name on a list, to being used as a NPC, to yes, dying.
Again, don't play there. Or anywhere where there is staff. No one wants to deal with your paranoia.
Being a staffer who lays claim to unplayed PCs for story use, up to and including killing them off, you would have to be saying I am lying to stand by your point that 100% of the time it is motivated by anger or anything other than story and setting needs.
I don't care if you think it's shitty, if you don't see the value, then don't play where it happens. That is your right. Don't conflate your dislike of something with suspect motivations on another's part.
@Tempest said:
ETA : No way is randomly killing Player Characters off-screen with vague shit like "killed by something?" not done out of OOC spite for one reason or another, even if it is just 'fuck this asshole for disappearing'. Use NPCs for your fucking "plot".
You are carrying a bitter history with you there. It's not always true. Period.
Have a required ante for scenes with meaning.
Something you'll lose if you don't pull off something.
Make something thats worth being meaningful risky and hard.
People ante often, keep it less often, either because they were boring, or because they walk away from the meaningful scene with less than they came in with.
Whoa there, EVERYONE thinks meeting scenes are necessary to RP.
What reaction do people have to players who post RP prefs, or at least things to avoid, somewhere like their +finger or Wiki or in specific rp-prefs code?
I'm better with lists of what they don't want. Lists of requirements somehow manage to come off as elitist or similar.
I don't know thats it a heartbreaker. it looks closer to a pared down and honed focus game. It explicitly involves players the same way poker does, so it's not really the same game experience.
My understanding of the term heartbreaker is its based on something else, with changes to be what the designer sorta wanted, but still is really just a copy of the base game. I could be wrong.
