Posts made by Misadventure

It’s true. The Force, the Jedi, all of it, it’s all true.

You are. However, if you have savvy players, you can suggest they color code things for their own convenience.
That way they choose the colors etc.

So imagine a game where damage taken shows in red, healing done shows in green, names are color coded to their relative danger to you, and powers and weapons are coded so you'll know what was being used. That is usually used to help you spot important details in a massive combat text output.

Now for RP ... yeeesh.

Only if characters are randomly given Asshole Cards that dictate when they will screw over other survivors for something truly trivial or selfish.

Ooooh no. That's Hunters Hunted. This is The Vigil. With Powers. And Factions.

Generally, with a known IP, you should be aiming to have presented events and the characters "as they should be". As Thenomain points out, you have a sort of list of powers, abilities, and personality traits (Original Concept or not), and if those were treated well, you have succeeded at the scene.

A typical example would be if the villain shows up, does a crime fitting with their known goals and personality, reacts to the hero as they have in the past, and either get squashed, or have a new thing to hold off the hero that will have to be overcome next time, if they do all that, they have succeeded, even if they get sent to jail.

I personally do not like playing canon characters, but I think I am right in saying that the players who do like that, want to do more of that. So win/lose shouldn't matter. Showing off the characters, and how they fit with, and contrast with the canon in this incarnation, is awesomesauce. Right?

So all the details of powers and abilities are about getting it right.

The scene is all about showing things things off.

There may be an additional role of moving the characterizations along, like showing off the black spider suits as making Spider-man even tougher, and perhaps a little off.

Do I have that right?

Yeshua of Nazareth was born in spring according to his own damn book. Don't get uppity that you wanted to tap into the various resurrection god traditions, and the return of sunlight for the Solstice. Eff you and you so called reason for the season.

It isn't. What everyone appears to be talking about in terms of the experience of horror, lethality and atmosphere is very different from typical World of Darkness translated to MU* format.

Hunter presents a significant difficulty for day to day role play. People want it, people will do it, but instead of contrasting with the horror, it will emphasize the artificiality of all these Hunters hanging out in a coffee shop, or banging each other, or posing really hard about the cigarette they are smoking. It will have all the intimacy needed for horror and discovery of the X-Files or Supernatural shot with a cast of thirty main characters.

The reason to look at what comic book creators do, is because playing a complicated war game is not evocative of super hero comics.

Mind, I love a system that can let me describe and measure a super power etc with lots of detail. However, dancing just far enough away from an area attack each time to wear someone down shouldn't be an emergent strategy based on endurance cost for powers, an action/ initiative system, and my movement rating. It should be more explicit so it feels less twinky and more like action and tension and tactics.

I think enthusiastic writers can make a crappy war game seem to sing, but it is their leveraging the sensation they aren't utterly in control and adding that to the sense of excitement, atop their utter control via writing tat makes many games work. The sheer fizzle factor (whiff factor) in games is stunning compared to comics.

It is not the only possible solution though.

@Derp Eh, sounds like defining what your task is would clear things up. You can look at that same approach and say "what I can actually accomplish is the task I have been set." That's mostly semantics though, perhaps with some perspective change tossed in.

I have been in the position of having to say I don't have what I need to do what I was asked to do, so I am going to drop the position.

It's a robot trap, of course. I will edit.

Writer creates story, dialogue, fitting in immediate goals and perhaps larger scale elements for a larger arc, upcoming events, etc. They may be handed requirements, such as who can or can't show up.

Artist storyboards it. Someone (writer, Editor) approves art or suggests changes. Art can carry significant tone that text will not. See the Watchmen comics where most panels look more like photos than action shots, everything is fairly mundane. This emphasizes the made of clay for the setting where the costumed folk read comics, but don't live that fancy four colored reality.

As far as I know they pretty much spot some beats of tension, setbacks, and either typical (Spider-Man says annoying funny things) or atypical (Spider-Man beats someone mercilessly) characterization, set those up and go.

Authority + Resources + Responsibility = Results is a formula I was handed on what is necessary for effective leadership/ownership of a task.

Without Authority, you can't make it happen.

Without Resources, you have to means to act.

Without Responsibility, you have no accountability, and you will go off the tracks eventually, if not immediately.

You could even have players submit examples, either as logged, or just a description of what they did. Crowd sourcing can be helpful.

May I suggest that the wiki or something have some suggestions and details to help people play through failed virtue and passion checks (when they are critical at least) so they don't fall into the old approach of failure just means nothing happens. Players should be able to own those moments for narrative purposes, and story and character development.

Hopefully people will try out bad situations and failed Virtue checks and all that. Striving against fate and ones worse side makes for great stories.

That's where games like Apocalypse World can define Moves that fit the fiction better.

For example, in Magical Fury, a (admittedly dark) Magical Girl RPG, they wanted fighting to be quick, and as narrative or not as you wanted, so they defined not single actions, but entire strategies for the fight: Go On The Offense, Protect Someone Else, Run Away. The threefold possible results give you more resolution detail, and you can describe it how ever much you want. A well thought out version of this sort of approach could allow for the more cinematic/interesting/character-driven actions and results we might like to see. As is, Apocalypse Engine games tend to be intense, but with few truly clear victories.