Posts made by Misadventure

@ominous I mean smart monsters as well. Just because a demon can't die permanently, doesn't mean it wants to pay the price to get back here again, etc.

Well, okay then.

@faraday In the context of WoD online games, especially larger ones, yes this sort of min-maxing exists. It tends to be allowed because the staff or the coders don't want to house rule character generation, and that characters tend to grow so much that in a few weeks the min-maxer can make up deficits they actually didn't want to keep. Staffers also don't want to say no to players.

The problem and the solution in WoD based games is just simple math. If you min-max your starting dots, there is a point down the road where you have the exact same stats as someone who did not min-max at chargen, but you have 50 xp more to spend.

So you can use that to have 1s in a bunch of things you'd like to have, or be even more razor focussed on some aspect of the game stats.

The Reach allowed respecs, which is a fine practice when characters realize they weren't built with the right things for the concept they had and it got past staff over view (which on large places doesn't really get done). So at respec people learn to rebuild their characters, and they just come out better off over all.

I think that this should just be solved by fixing the math: don't make dots, just use xp, so the build costs the same no matter how you approach it. Likewise if you want to see a bunch of 1s and 2s, then give people 1s and 2s that have to stay that way at approval time.

That's just one aspect of the issue, and there are many partial solutions.
Don't have very many places to spend xp, and make sure they are all important. Some players will find this way to simple, bland, and so on.
Separate out the critical from the less critical, and keep them separate. Players will try to make anything IMPORTANT if they have it,.
Make peoples characters for them. This means that only the character designer are doing the power gaming or unfairness. many players resent this.

So my final though for ME is I want my players to represent their character as much as needs be via the stats, simple or complex as that list may be. I want them to understand how that will act in the rules. And I want it to be equal opportunity, without hidden interactions or means to get ahead without a truly balancing cost.

This is the most interesting part of this threads topic to me.

Then there are issues of player competitiveness, the genre being represented, the issue with 5 players with niches and starring roles vs 100s of characters who come and go and may never see spotlight time, or even want it.

@the-sands IC certification is also just fluff.

Yes they have the same rolls, but until the one person has medicine 3 they don't qualify for the fluff.

In the end, I just design systems that are better described to get what I want. One of those details is that skill and talent do not act the same way in the system, and so it is clearer. Then things like Advantages are attached to it, like being a MD.

@The-Sands If you want to be literal about wording, then I would say sure your 5 Int +1 Medicine person is as good as a 3 Int 3 Medicine person. But by the description, only the 3 Medicine person would be certified as a MD. Ya?

@thenomain The question comes with contexts you aren't sharing, so no one has their bearings.

Maybe give an example of a part of a game that in particular doesn't translate well so is often ignored or altered? Like the Wastelands effect of Prometheans as written can't be sustained with a game that is settled in one city region.

So what can we do? Reduce it? Turn it into a lesser Blight that is a telltale, and may upset the local spirits but fades when they move around some?

Take it away and focus more heavily on how failures to be human makes them get lost in mazes of bad ideas to try out before they get back on the right track for the Great Work? Exchange "chase the monster away" with "tragedy and lost in the social wilderness".

My one consideration for higher mortality rate games is that the world, the NPCs, treat it as such. They don't want to die either. They will peace out or surrender, or try to find a way.

That is what makes some people so dangerous seeming, they are too dumb, or too desperate, or unable to contain themselves or their forces, and they march to their doom.

@wizz oooh, so Miami Vice plus Sunset Strip plus Hollywood plus New York That Never Sleeps, and everywhere you look, if you can see past the Veil, Things and Events are right before your eyes?

@wizz So a setting that seems normal, but if you are in the know it is fairly easy to find some weird stuff going on, strange people, and if you drive down the wrong alleyway you may stumble onto something really bad once upon a time in the west?

Because I am always behind these days:

One way to help ensure that people have a wide spread of skills is to just say "and after you spend your xp, you also get 5 skills at 1, 3 at 2. Or whatever, so they can choose to have some exposure to some things that fit them. Those fixed slots have the same value/cost to everyone (usually, looking at you here Chivalry and Sorcery 3rd edition and on) so its fair and assures that people will still have some width.

I have found that the various Hacks like The Black Hack are really great simplified versions of the experience.

I mention it because to me, having a million magic items, feats, complex builds, and weird saves may initiate someone into the minutia aspect, but it also can baffle them as to why this is fun.

What exactly are you trying to prevent?

Possible answers:
Players putting all their eggs in some basket, and having the least in everything else.
Players putting all their eggs in some critical seeming basket (combat or investigation rolls), and having the least in unused baskets (social rolls).
Players ignoring stats etc that should be important, but never really are in play.
Players ending up with an advantage because how they created their character (eg in WoD putting all 1s in stats to get as many 5s as possible, because that is worth more total XP).
Players knowing how many dice they have, and so knowing their odds of success or failure.
Players knowing what they rolled, and so knowing their likely success failure and the likely range of abilities opposing them.
Players playing like they know exactly how good their character is, and where others are weak(+sheet telepathy).

What do the number ranges mean (are they perhaps the total of a skill and stat?)

I have addressed some of this for WoD many times:
convert stats or skills for each block (physical stats, social skills whatever) into whatever pattern of high and low you want to se on average.
(I use min-maxers delight, mentioned above, as many high as possible stats and skills for 4+ dots, but you can do sane things like set all stats at 2 base, and gives a reasonable spread of skills like 1 1 1 2 2 3 4)
Figure the value of those spreads in XP
Use XP in chargen.

This means there is no advantage to one way over another, no matter how you place the starting xp, 100 xp later the two characters are still worth the exact same number of XP. Using the dot system makes that almost completely unlikely, rewarding the focussed character concept/power builder, and punishing the realistic or generalized concept player.

Players will always figure out your numbers, so there is no mystery there. If you want mystery have +code assign an adjective to a given range of success, and never let the players see how many dice are rolled or their results. A lot of work for little payoff, unless you do a great deal more with that behind the scenes.

I've mentioned this before, but the 1st edition 7Th Sea had a player survey in the back, where players rated their interest in a list of topics (like warfare, intrigue, espionage, romance). While I am sure that might be useful in that form for this, it might be a good way to assess interest in what unites the players as group, by taking the suggestions they have in the book, adding in ones you think would be cool, and taking out ones you aren't interested in.

My feedback on the system is I like the changes to the base PbtA: the way you build Themes about your character, which have Tags, and how instead of attributes you add applicable Tags to rolls that they apply to. I am always a little uneasy about the PbtA use of things like a gun as a tag item.

The meat of the experience will be in how the Moves are written up (and then played out). I haven't gotten into that part yet, but if they are decently designed, or well designed, you'll have enough to power some fun events.

I DO think you want to decide how shenanigansish it will be, perhaps using various movies or TV shows as examples.

EG are we Altered Carbon, Lost Boys, Buffy, Lost Girl, Big Trouble in Little China or Shaolin Soccer?

79 tonight, but probably 60ish before they cut it off for an hour or two. 17 pages to go.

@jaded You already have everything I have. Besides, I trust you.

Actually I got through 2 pages, and they shut me down for too many activations from this IP. I could jump to another but ... meh.

I will actually have unclaimed games at the end though, so yay, freebies for some one!

@jaded Wanna do it for me?????

;_;

There IS a redeem on Steam button! It's not fast but at least it works. Undertale down, ... 20 pages to go.

@insomnia They seem to have disabled that functionality where Steam and HB talk to one another. And thats 20 pages with claimed keys hidden.

I may have a problem.

@auspice Okay, I log into Steam on the web, copy the names of all the games in my library, paste into a spreadsheet, then take the list of game keys, and do the same, and then do a column compare with conditional formatting green lighting games i still need the codes of.

Then I can give the rest away, right?

Okay. I have 20 PAGES of unclaimed keys from Humble Bundle. Is there a mod, an app, anything that will go through and add the ones i don't have to Steam for me? Even just say if I already have it on Steam? ANYTHING?

@arkandel Now you tell me.
Who will power level my what is it again? Non-Hardcore Seasonal?