Posts made by Miss Demeanor

Hey guys? Maybe move the discussion to a thread not about dead celebrities, please?

Are you looking at implementing the Supernatural Merit Templates?

I'm sure I've posted this before somewhere but...

These are my current liegelords. On the left, the orange tabby is DJ (short for Don Juan, though he has long since proven himself to be more of a Don Quixote) and the calico is Glitter (my oldest son named her). Glitter is the princess, and DJ is our resident grump who will not sit on laps because legs are SCARY.

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

@Miss-Demeanor said in RL Anger:

That you are even acknowledging your dog having an issue and working towards taking him/her back to obedience training (or to initial obedience training) immediately puts you head and shoulders over 80% of the dog owners I personally know. Its disgusting and sad, but I honestly know more people who would rather let their dogs chew up all their furniture/get into things than take a few hours out of their tv watching schedule to get their dog properly trained. And it drives me nuts.

Remove the word "dog" and put in "kid," and you have my complaint about parents.

And, yes, I believe that obedience training can work for kids.

Concurred and upvoted.

@Cupcake That you are even acknowledging your dog having an issue and working towards taking him/her back to obedience training (or to initial obedience training) immediately puts you head and shoulders over 80% of the dog owners I personally know. Its disgusting and sad, but I honestly know more people who would rather let their dogs chew up all their furniture/get into things than take a few hours out of their tv watching schedule to get their dog properly trained. And it drives me nuts. I own cats. I love cats. I love them in part because they don't require training. You put a cat in a room with a food/water dish and a litter box? I guarantee you that cat will be going in the litter box. Even kittens figure it out quickly. This (and space issues) is why we don't own a dog. We recognize that the dog will require far more time and effort than we can realistically put towards its needs. But people will buy dogs every day with absolutely no intention of ever getting their dog trained, not getting them housebroken (which is ew) and not getting them obedience training (which can also be ew).

So really... A++ for being a responsible damn dog owner.

George S. Irving

Goodbye Mr. Heat Miser.

@Faceless said in Dead Celebrity Thread:

@WTFE said in Dead Celebrity Thread:

And don't forget that 2016 still has five days left to get Buzz Aldrin.

And Dick Van Dyke.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Don't even SAY it!

holds up a boombox that only plays Careless Whisper

@surreality Yes, they recognized that different setting would require different rules... hence them making a whoooooooooole other line of books specifically for a LARP setting! However, MUSHing is comparable to tabletop in its mechanics and theme and rules. The game lines really don't require a ton of editing or House Ruling to make them workable on a MU* (unlike a LARP).

And here's the big thing... clarification =/= House Rule. You can clarify something without making it a rule. I don't know why you insist on talking about the two as if they're interchangeable, they really aren't.

And... TR failed on the House Rules front. What you mentioned about biokinesis? That's a clarification, that's not a House Rule. A House Rule is taking a mechanic that doesn't work for whatever reason, and changes it to make it work within the setting. A clarification is taking something that is functional but perhaps ambiguously worded (or someone is just an idiot and chooses to interpret it wrong) and offers the explanation/interpretation of that mechanic. And the House Rules on TR were pretty much all geared to either impede or overpower a splat, depending on which sphere you're looking at (and rarely in the direction common sense would dictate). It got utterly ridiculous.

Ex. Moonbeam and her wolfpup. She saw 'can be no bigger than a small dog' and chose to interpret that as being able to magically stop the aging process of her wolfpup so she could keep it small (completely ignoring the part mentioning that its just a normal animal). Wendigo clarified that it had to be an animal that aged normally while remaining no bigger than a small dog. Its not a House Rule, it didn't require special mention on the wiki under the Wolfblood merits. She just clarified what that particular aspect of the merit means.

Now if you look at Reno's House Rules for Wolfbloods? It addresses things that are necessary for a game that runs 24/7 and already has over 42 unique logins but are not addressed in the book. Like +noting a specific Kuruth trigger for the Anger Issues Tell. Or spelling out a resistance roll for the Enticing Tell that isn't offered in the book.

I feel like once you can separate the two, you'll see that House Rules aren't abundantly necessary to a MU*.

Edit to avoid double post:

@Faceless BE HAPPY YOU SHOWED ME THE ERROR OF MY WAYS.

@surreality The biggest issue I have with what you're saying is that you're taking a few sentences in the start of the WoD/CoD books and waving them about like a Get Out of Jail Free card.

Yes, the book states you can change whatever doesn't work for you... in the context of a small group setting in which everyone can relatively easily agree upon what will be changed and how. Blanket applying that statement to the entire gameline as its being translated to MUSHes is about as ridiculous as expecting there to be no House Rules ever, at all. Its the opposing ends of the spectrum.

No House Rules Ever means the game will have areas where it fails hard and no way to fix it. It will lead to frustration and disgruntlement, and the best you can do is shrug and tell people to deal with it.

Do Whatever I Want Because the Book Says I Can leads to the game becoming so bloated with House Rules that its barely recognizable as a game and expects far more effort from its players to keep up with an ever-expanding body of House Rules.

This is where TR and FC failed (partly, anyways). They both quickly became a 'if I don't like the way this works, I'll just whine til they change it' free-for-all, no matter how much it fucked over the people that were actually playing by the RAW. More than half of the House Rules on both games are utterly unnecessary, add little to nothing to the game, and could easily have been solved simply by telling someone 'this is how it works per the book, follow it'.

tldr; House Rules for the sake of House Rules are confusing at best and actively thumb their noses at players at the worst. The books were written entirely within the context of a small group of dedicated players (including the part that says to change whatever you want).

I largely just dislike making a blanket House Rule to solve a problem involving one aspect of a mechanic/power/etc. That and House Rules that are made... just because. Because someone in power wants a shiny, everyone has to suffer.

And the hits just keep on coming...

RIP Harry Morgan - Dragnet, MASH, Inherit the Wind, and so, SO many more...

@Insomnia said in Dead Celebrity Thread:

Dr. Bombay from Bewitched too.

God's rest, Captain Winston. He finally found his grand adventure.

@ThatGuyThere said in House Rules vs Rules as Written:

@Warma-Sheen said in House Rules vs Rules as Written:

Not sure about Dark Fate off the top of my head, but Common Sense is one that should have 0 issue and should be taken by more people, but isn't because people don't want to "waste" points.

You do realize that as written common sense requires a storyteller present, right? That is not something that is happening in the vast majority of MUSH scenes, making it a prime example of something not written for a MUSH environment.

Edit for @Miss-Demeanor OWoD version is just the storyteller warns you before you do something abjectly stupid. Exact wording "Storyteller should alert you as to how your potential action might violate practicality."
No roll involved.

Jesus, I wish we could get that Common Sense back! I would take that all day long. The one we have now is utter shit in comparison!

@Warma-Sheen said in House Rules vs Rules as Written:

@surreality Doubtful. I think you're just willing to cater to worse behavior than I would be.

@Ganymede said in House Rules vs Rules as Written:

Here's two good examples of things that don't work on a MU that would work in TT: oWoD's Dark Fate flaw and Common Sense merit. These should be House Ruled or barred.

Not sure about Dark Fate off the top of my head, but Common Sense is one that should have 0 issue and should be taken by more people, but isn't because people don't want to "waste" points.

I'll be honest, I can't really remember owod's Common Sense merit, but if its anything like nwod's Common Sense merit, then its terrible in a MU* setting. Useful once per chapter (ugh, already having to convert TT time to MU time), the Storyteller can make a roll for you (so it can only be used in a plot with a dedicated ST) to determine risk vs rewards of potential actions. And mind, the ST is under zero compunction actually allow you to use this merit. The merit itself states as such. For this, you use up 4 of 7 given merit dots (because of course, its character creation only).

There's not even really a good way to track how often a given character is using this merit. Seriously, given that in this day and age, anyone can be an ST... how do you keep track? How do you make sure that someone isn't using this in every plot scene? What staffer would want to have to track this?

@Sunny Insisting that things need to be House Ruled 'because they don't work', when in reality they do work (just not the way the staffer/player wants them to) is also downright stupid. Which I believe is what @Warma-Sheen is trying to express.

Yes, some House Rules are necessary for conversion from tabletop to MU*. If you try to tell me that every House Rule that was made for Haunted Memories, The Reach, and Fallcoast was absolutely necessary? I will laugh at you for forever.

Nobody has even once said that House Rules should never happen. Not once. Can we please stop trying to force that into anyone's post as though it can be used to refute everything they're saying? Actually... let me just...

There.

@surreality @Catsmeow tosses a handful of new pennies into the air

I'm firmly in the camp that believes House Rules should be kept minimal and aimed to fix only issues of clarity of RAW or transferal of medium. Yes, there are times where House Rules are necessary, but the bloat of unnecessary House Rules tends to cause as many or more problems than they were meant to fix.

@ZombieGenesis Holy shit, man. Fast and speedy recovery and well-wishes!

@Hexagon There's a world of difference between 'allows an occasional respec that doesn't result in anything actually being lost, only shifted around' and 'mandatory taxation on already purchased dots that will absolutely result in loss of earned dots if you don't make sure you have enough xp to cover the cost of their upkeep'. And its not even something that would only happen once or twice a year. You would have to keep a constant running tally of what everything will 'cost' just to ensure that you have enough xp saved up come 'tax time' to pay for it. Which means at the very least, trying to remember once a month to sit down and math out what you have versus what it will cost. That's a lot more effort than most people are going to want to put into simply maintaining the stats they already purchased. Especially when no other game will take away the stuff they already bought if they don't pay for it again.