Best posts made by Ominous

@reason

Yeah, that's the Crab Clan's gimmick. They man the wall and all their lands border the Shadowlands. They're a gruff, stoic people who have little time for the social niceties adhered to by many of the other clans. I believe they were inspired by the early eras of Japanese samurai, when samurai were mostly just warriors and didn't focus so much on practicing calligraphy, composing haiku, playing go, and enjoying tea ceremonies. I always got a Scottish highlander (the actual highlanders, not the immortals) vibe from them.

@Paris said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

Spinach is surprisingly high in protein.

That, it's iron content, and a translation error of a study is why people thought spinach was ridiculously good for you in the early 20th century and led to Popeye using it like steroids.

@reason said in Weird or unrealistic gaming... stuff:

As far as weird/unrealistic gaming stuff, I hate how characters in d20-based worlds mature and grow their skills to increase success in 5% increments. Linear probability is garbage, and game systems that adopt it should be ashamed of themselves.

-r

The problem there is finding a resolution system that includes enough of a range of sigmas, while also making it so that a +1 bonus is still meaningful without being too meaningful.

@carma said in Balancing wizards and warriors:

Here's an idea for the Aes Sedai - make their magic work off intent. So if they're not doing something to directly harm someone, but in the mind of the caster, the intended outcome is to eventually cause harm to someone, it backfires and harms the caster instead.

Yeah, that's one I forgot.

Magic Has Standards of Conduct method - Magic is tied to the spiritual realm and using it requires you to abide by certain rules, beliefs, what have you. For example, using magic to kill is wrong, and, if you do it, you get to do it once, then you lose your magic. Or maybe now you can only use dark magic which can only do harmful destructive things. Even if you try to do good with dark magic, it warps and perverts your intention to still cause harm

@arkandel said in The Desired Experience:

To clarify:

If you have a game like say, Arx, then you have a large playerbase split between X factions such as factions and organizations. These need to be both populated and led; that means you have someone (hopefully at least a few someones!) to play guardsmen types and someone to play their Lord Captain Commander. But at least there are X factions which are not empty. The LCC position could be classified as a 'mover and shaker' in this context.

On a much smaller game this isn't quite the same. You may have, say, Lancea Sanctum with 1 character, Crones who are empty, Carthians with 3 characters, etc. You can easily end up with too many chiefs and too few Indians, so to speak (and apologies for the outdated figure of speech ). If almost everyone is a 'mover and shaker' then no one is.

I don't know if you'd still disagree but I hope that further elaborates on my initial statement a bit.

Nope. Disagree entirely. For your premise to be correct games like Dune, Twilight Imperium, Cosmic Encounter, 1830, Republic of Rome, etc. where you play as the head of factions, stellar empires, or robber barons should all suck, since no one is playing the little people. They're fucking great board games. Now take that and add fluff and roleplaying. Done.

@il-volpe said in The Desired Experience:

Do I think RPing exclusively with four other people is cool? No. I think it's equivalent to showing up at the pot luck with four sandwiches to hand to your friends. If it's a sandboxy game, okay, its maybe more like a park where people are meant to do that, but probably you're using plates and napkins and drinking from the host's margarita pitcher.

Ooooh, I like this analogy.

@ganymede

Bringing four sandwiches to one potluck because you're short on cash is one thing. Consistently bringing four sandwiches to the monthly potluck gathering over and over is another. If the first, it happens and isn't a problem. If the latter, your invitations are going to start getting lost in the mail.

@ganymede

If you're consistently only bringing four sandwiches and by that I assume you mean you are giving those four sandwiches to yourself and exactly the same other three people every time and you're not contributing in any other way, such as conversing with a bunch of other attendees, helping set up or clean up after the potluck, etc, then the other 96 people out of 100 at my potluck are either apathetic to your presence or have been getting annoyed at hearing how delicious and awesome your sandwiches are that they don't get to eat, so I'm not seeing much of a negative to the loss of your presence at my potluck and possibly a small positive. If you want to consistently only make four super fantastic sandwiches for you and your three friends and only talk and spend time with them, have a card game/board game night with them instead of going to the potluck. Everyone will have a much better time.

Or to get out of the analogy and apply this more directly to the topic at hand, what @Sunny said.

@runescryer said in The Desired Experience:

Hmmm...A thought has occurred to me...

I present to you 'Runescryer's Law of MU's'...

"Given sufficient population and lack of Events, all MU's, regardless of theme, become sex MU's"

I'm not sure this is a new realization. Pretty sure this has been an established fact for a while.

@derp said in The Desired Experience:

@faraday said in The Desired Experience:

Can we maybe just agree that the potluck analogy is imperfect?

This is why I used 'community theater with unlimited stages'.

Maybe large city park? You can hang out with a big group or you can wander off with a small group of friends to do your own thing.

I recently started thinking about faction design, and I have debated going with a looser faction than what most MU*s have with factions. Instead of noble houses or groups with a defined leader, I am thinking that factions need to be more akin to political parties and interest groups. Biden is the head of the Democratic Party, but the actual sway he holds is minimal and others can stamp out a position contrary to his and win the hearts of minds of members. Unlike a Noble house where the head of the house can disown you and remove you.

With these looser factions you can have some tenets that are immutable for the faction and then a bunch of less firm doctrines. GM staff will have the NPCs react to things based on the tenets and doctrines but the doctrines can be changed over time by the PCs. If a PC is doing something against a tenet or a bunch of doctrines, then they'll lose influence and disregarded. This gives room for jockeying within the faction between PCs and also solves the absent leader problem.

Isn't a pizzadilla a calzone?

I would love to see/run a Space Feudalism/Rome game with Aurora 4X being used to adjudicate the travel and battles of fleets. It would be an enormous time sink for whoever has to SpaceMaster it, though. Also, the economic side of Aurora 4X isn't as developed as I would like for a MU*.

My three solutions to "Space Nobles need some reason to be seriously important militarily" for when I need feudalism in space:

• The Birthright model, stolen from the Birthright D&D setting. The nobles are the strongest psychics, which is a genetic quality, so bloodline is important. Around each other, they are normal, but a regular human is a combination of an open book and a car. They can read every thought and control every action if they want.

• The nobles are the .01% and they own everything. This is basically megacorporations in space, except with a small pool of stockholders. They started using noble titles to satisfy their enormous egos.

• Democracy failed. It seems to be doing such a bang-up job in the real world already, so it's not too hard to imagine a group of elites deciding that the ignorant masses can't be trusted to wipe their own backsides let alone control civilization, especially if the current civilization developed from the remants of an apocalyptic war waged between democratic societies.

Random comment: I feel that MU*s should really pull more from LARP mechanics than tabletop mechanics, simply because many LARPS have large groups of players playing at one time and have mechanics better designed for social RP.

@faraday said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

• Ask before joining a scene in progress.

This is the most asinine rule I come across in this hobby, particularly if there are private rooms to use. I am fine with people saying "We're on a dinner date, so, no, you can't sit at our table," but to deny my character being allowed in the room at all? No, I'm going to pose my character striding over to your character's table and pouring the glass on wine on your head. Take it to a private room if you want to control who can join the scene.

@Kestrel said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

@faraday said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

• Ask before posing logs containing sensitive/private IC information.

What constitutes sensitive/private IC information on a MUSH other than TS? I could be misreading between the lines, but based on various communications and the one instance where I asked someone, 'Can I post this?' I felt like I was met with this weird implication that one should always have nothing to hide, and that if you aren't entirely open about your character's motives/secrets, you're being kinda sketchy.

It depends on the MU*. On the 100, they aren't really any OOC secrets. There are plenty of IC secrets, but the players know most of them. On other MU*s, Firan or Kushiel's Debut for example, IC secrets tend to be OOC secrets too, as the environments are much more antagonistic.

@Thenomain said in Cultural differences between MUDs and MUSHes:

A single room can have multiple scenes in it, and it happens all the time. They are interlinked by proximity, but nobody is throwing you out of a room by saying they're not willing to include you in their interactions. There's no reason to be a jerk because you feel slighted. There's certainly no reason to feel slighted.

I am referring to people who have told me before "No, you can't be in here at all," when they are RPing in a public room. It's incredibly rare, but it has happened.

@Apos Then my suggestion would be to give a list of names of people who may have clues related to what is being investigated. Include a few false positives, so its not a definite thing. I honestly would appreciate a list of 'go pester these people and RP it out' rather than the 'wait for the roll every week' approach I am using now.

EDIT: Spelling errors. Phone posting is hard.

With regards to the @randomscene code, it should be noted that BOTH players get a bonus - the player who gets another player as their random scene and the player to be scened with, so there is incentive for the person to be scened with to cooperate.

@surreality said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

@Kanye-Qwest The game has a preferences system accessible on game and on wiki that players can fill out re: this and various other subjects, stating their interest or lack thereof in that subject matter.

In other words, if someone wants to play a character who is very racist or sexist, they can say so there, in a completely non-confrontational• context. This provides a warning to others if that's something they don't want to deal with, but also means that a character who wants to explore those challenges knows there's someone they can reasonably expect to encounter them with IC. This is actually not uncommon already; I have seen endless wiki pages on games that make note of this, and do so to make fellow players aware in advance.

While that does address some of the issue, the offending material is still present on the server and threatens to loom in on an unrelated scene. Let's say Jane avoids anything involving rape (I am using that for the example, because it seems to be the most common area people avoid), so she avoids people who are OK RPing that. Everything is hunky dory, until John rapes Jill. While Jane isn't involved in the initial scene, talk spreads through town "Did you hear about Jane getting attacked and raped!". Then the manhunt begins, and the catch the bastard. "John did it and they got him.". Now there is a trial scheduled and that's put on the +event schedule as well as the subsequent hanging. Jane wanted to avoid the topic of rape, by rape is what everyone is talking about.

For another example, a black player, Bob, wants to avoid any racism on the game. He doesn't RP with people with the rascist flag set and he even plays a white character just to be safe. He's in a random scene in a tavern, enjoying himself with RP that doesn't have a whiff of rascist in them, when Bureaugard the plantation owner, McReedy the fugitive slave hunter, and Billy Bob the KKK member (It's a very eclectic setting) walk in and start throwing the slurs immediately. What is Bob to do? He has done everything to avoid such topics but it's come to him. Is he expected to leave since he can't handle the RP? That sounds like a recipe for easy trolling. Does he ask the other players to leave? It's a public room and that's rather rude. Is Bob stuck just RPing in private rooms where he can control who comes in?

@WTFE said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

@Kestrel You know, it is actually possible that "create the game that you want" is precisely what @surreality is doing…

What I'm seeing is a lot of people bitching that it's not the game they want.

I am in the same boat as others, and think surreality should make whatever game they want. However, surreality did start this thread asking for input, so we're giving. We didn't start this thread saying "OMG, look at what surreality thinks and here is our thoughts on that."

I am alright playing on a game with rape, racism, etc. I'm not going to engage in such RP myseld, but if it's happening around me, whatever. But surreality is the one that asked, and we are only responding with our thoughts.