Posts made by Misadventure

@tek said in RL things I love:

I would love to be the first woman to play George Washington. I'd kill it.

Are you a tall redhead? Favor dentures and leading armies? What's going on here?

Commence ta practicin!

I love my Dalaran Hearthstone so much!

I have the Talent that says I am Prepared?

Deus Ex.

Perhaps someday it will be one world.
When everyones laws about content are the same.

@ganymede Someone said there is something that removes the targets skill rating from their defense based on terror. I am reacting to that.

If that is how they handle any attack where the foe shouldn't have full defense, like an attack from invisibility, that makes it a little better. It removes any correlation between cause and effect.

I still think its stupid but that's a personal taste issue.

Doesn't make me like it better, for stated reasons. It's disempowering to others, instead of empowering to the werewolf. That also tends to be a bad move in game design.

Likewise, it doesn't address why terror doesn't affect my attributes. Why not just say everything is always frozen in terror? I get what they are going for, but I'd rather see a set penalty that can be partially offset by some roll, a virtue, something other than ignore one aspect of other characters. Likewise, someone with no skill factor just isn't affected. It's a badly considered mechanic.

I dislike this skill bypass idea. It goes against everything that nature and rpg design is about. That experience matters.

Make a setting based on the ascendancy of one antagonist group subsuming another, or several other antagonist groups. It can be by violence, by blood ties, by merging of philosophy, or even alliance between the powers behind the groups EG the Pure Ones get backed by the Geists, The Seers successfully manage a magic using vampiric state with the help of a vampiric faction and these new life eating immortal mages are ready to crush everyone. Whatever.

Has the term, rather than the state, moved towards negative use only?

Other than organizational statements, I can only think of "You are entitled to your opinion" as positively phrased.

Perhaps part of the issue is whether people player to overcome difficulty and limitations to their available choices in fiction, or to not have any difficulties and limitations. Note that if you are prefer that you in complete control of your characters difficulties in the fiction, you are in the latter group.

I need t-shirts with game mechanics on them. That's my nerd.

"Roll Quickness. On a success you draw one card, and one more card per Raise."

And that's downright OBVIOUS folks.

"Subtract Defense Value from Attack Value, if there is a positive value roll Acting Value/5 D6 for Effect."

Awww yeah, that's some sexy stuff right there.

For whatever reason, the limits on mages as far as paradox and witnesses go seems to lack fictional punch. I don't see much to do with it as a player. I can make up stuff, and will, but it still seems closer to a criminal cleaning up evidence than something with deep personal meaning.

Definitely. Or at least gaining skill at such is a good life goal.
And some people are more vulnerable, or more resilient, and so on.

And some are OP. Owl.

Then what do you do?

@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

Likewise, that old chestnut has proven to not be so true. Inflicting stress is a primate tactic. It isn't seen just a rating on a 1 to 10 scale of how that individual rates your current behavior. It's seen as a threat to belonging, to being part of the social group, aka the survival group. Primates know this, and use it often.

Saying you can just decide to ignore it is like claiming that you can just decide not to react in the least to a baby screech.

@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.

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.