Posts made by Ominous

@WTFE Also, by not reading some of the blog articles you missed one of the more important quotes which I will paraphrase as 'The story of tabletop games is the story of the world not your characters.' What you should have done is exactly the thing the professor suggested, roll some new characters. Maybe even roll up the characters that shot down your original characters.

Surprise! It turned out that the first chapter of this book was told from the perspective of someone who dies at the very beginning. I can't think of any famous authors who started a doorstopper series that is now a major HBO show in the same manner.

@WTFE I'll go with definition number 1.

story

1. a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader; tale.

We had a true tale of a fictitious tale in prose designed to instruct. Also, I found it amusing in a dark humor sort of way.

Narrativist game mechanics produce stories that fit the novel, movie, television series, etc. mold. Gamist game mechanics produce stories of the "you won't believe the crazy thing I saw driving to work today" variety. I like them both, but clearly you have a preference for one over the over.

I will add that narrativist styles produce stories inside the game. Gamist styles produce stories about the playing of the game itself. "Did I tell you about the time I slayed a giant by myself at level 1?"

@WTFE said in Eliminating social stats:

And from the gamist perspective he was right. It's just that as a narrative it fucking sucked. So right here you're contradicting what you opened with. You're saying "from a gamist perspective it was a good narrative". There's a reason why "gamist" and "narrativist" are on opposing ends of a spectrum: they're not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.

I disagree again. Both can lead to very interesting though very different stories. I mean you just told us the story a few posts ago. It was a story. It's not going to win any awards, but, you have a story to tell. It's like the time I got my hand slammed in a car door while ridiculously drunk. Awful experience at the time, but it makes for a funny story.

@WTFE I disagree. I think that what the professor did was the better story option. Some stories don't have happy or even meaningful endings, which makes them even more poignant. One of the inspiring texts for D&D (It was in Appendix N) was Seven Geases where spoilers the main character survives a whole host of adventures only to die by slipping and falling from a cliff at the end. end spoilers

Then again, I am a strong gamist rather than a narrativist, unless I am playing something like Mystic Empyrean or Microscope.

You can read all about the founding ideas behind old-school D&D in this series where a blogger played with Mike Mornard, one of the early players in Gygax's group: http://blogofholding.com/?series=mornard I think everyone should read the whole series, as D&D set the stage for our entire hobby. It's sort of a Federalist Papers of RPGs.

Addendum: I do not want to imply that I found those servers to have chosen the best option. Most times the issues of everyone having 10 out of 10 in every "I kill it" skill was very prevalent OR the system lacked a skill system at all and it was a full consent server.

@Arkandel MUs.

@Arkandel Most of the servers that I have played on did not have a social resolution mechanic and did not have social skills. I think that is the more common option actually. The general "solution" to making that choice is expanding the number of physical and mental skills to keep combat monster bloat down.

So far I am hearing a few solutions:

Use a social combat system.

• Pros: Pre-existing code makes it easy to set-up and people know generally how it works and how to use it.
• Cons: Threads like this come into existence. "Save or die (socially)" sucks as a resolution system.

Get rid of social stats entirely.

• Pros: The easiest solution - less to code and no arguments over whether Bob seduced Alice or not.
• Cons: Combat monsters become even more common with few other areas for xp expenditures. Those without RL social skills will never get to pretend fun-time having social skills.

Use a resource system giving higher social stat characters access to more resources.

• Pros: Removes "save or die" rolls that result in characters doing something the player doesn't want to do. Allows players without social skills to still feel like they can pretend to have them by letting them negotiate/buy the result they want.
• Cons: Needs a whole new system no MU has done before to be designed, coded, and tested. If the system isn't fine-tuned well, the resources may have little worth, resulting in those with said resources being unable to spend them to get what they want.

Remove dialogue entirely from RP and keep using social combat. Just like people post "Bob swings his sword at Alice," social interactions will consist of "Bob greets Alice and tries to sell her beachfront property in Montana."

• Pros: Keeps standard social combat systems while potentially removing issues such as "Your character's dialogue isn't believable. I don't care how well you rolled."
• Cons: Removes dialogue, which is probably a critical component of why people RP to begin with.

Utilize a storygame system rather than the standard Tabletop RP paradigm we have been using. Example: troupe style system where all characters go on the roster when their current player logs off, so a character can be played by many people over the course of a week and attachments to individual characters are minimized, increasing ooc-ic separation.

• Pros: Paradigm shift may completely remove the issues allowing for social combat to be used with little trouble or an entirely different resolution system is used that changes even how physical combat works.
• Cons: Someone has to code it. People have to learn it. Unfamiliarity to players may delay or even prohibit adoption.

@Pyrephox uses Wall of Text. It is super-effective.

I worry about how much GM intervention some of the ideas would need. Also, as pointed out, it doesn't address immediate scene issues that require fast resolution, like bluffing a guard.

@Ghost A lot of the social mechanics used are adapted from tabletop which are primarily cooperative PvE rather than PvP. I really don't put much faith in them for that reason. The other reason is that they usually treat social interactions as just another form of combat with very similar systems and, in the end, they aren't the same and really require different methods for handling resolution, especially in a PvP environment. Just look at D&D 3e Diplomacy rules for a broken mess: http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/683/roleplaying-games/diplomacy-design-notes-part-i

@Ganymede We need more battle to the death quiz shows on MUs.

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

@Ominous I agree. It's outdated. So let's make a MU that breaks these kinds rules, man.

My coding is "Baby's First C/C++ Program" level of skill. I can make a tic-tac-toe game that can play 2, 1, or 0 human players, and that is the apex of my skill.

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

I'm also aware of the D&D thinking on this matter, where gamism is the thing to do, but this doesn't work as well on any kind of RPG that isn't about killing monsters and collecting loot, and frankly, we have MMORPGs and Diablo for that now. IC/OOC distinction is important in spoken/written RPGs like tabletop RPGs or MU*s because they caulk a hole that World of Warcrack simply cannot: the literary-narrative one.

That problem is that MUing wants to have its cake and eat it too. They want a more narrativist style but keep using gamist mechanics. Rather than using some of the really interesting and unique ideas that have come about in "storygames" like Mystic Empyrean (a game I badly want to base a MU on), we keep using concepts like each character has one player, no shared GMing, the GM controls the world and the players control their characters, etc.

@Lain To address your actual point, I come from an old-school D&D background where the PC is an avatar of the player, a meeple, to use a board game term, that the player explores and experiences the world through. I personally feel that the easiest way to get a character to feel, want, avoid, like, hate, whatever something is to make the player have that feeling too. Essentially method acting in a MU. Mainly because there will be that sizable portion of players who cannot separate OOC from IC.

However, if we are going to put IC/OOC separation on a pedestal and hold it as the ideal state, then rethinking some basic assumptions of how MUs are designed may be needed in order to increase distance from a player and a PC. One of my suggestions has been to move more towards troupe style play, where no one person controls a PC. Instead they are all on a roster and, when you log on, you can grab any character not currently played and take them out for a few scenes. This would be a completely different paradigm than what we have now, and things like IC secrets also being OOC secrets wouldn't be a thing.

@Lain I ninja'd you. I corrected my misuse of NPC.

First, I think the easiest solution is to make it a standard rule that social skills can't be used to initiate TS. At most the skills can make a person swoon or get a kiss out of them. Unless your game is some sort of Fantasy or Horror theme that has succubus archetypes that feed on sex, or it's a game about prostitution or something, there really isn't much reason to allow it. That will hopefully ease some of the concerns about people abusing the skills to get their rocks off.

@Rook

That is somewhat similar to my idea of letting social stats grant access to resources. The resources in your example being simple with Influence and Resistance.

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

I think part of the point of social stats is to deprive targets of the exact kind of agency you describe, though. Let's say I want to use Intimidate in a WoD game. My character is annoyed with someone, so they decide to rob them. He pulls out his knife, waves it in the guy's face, and says, "Gimme all yer money!" with the intention of compelling him to do just that.

This is also a good argument for using resources instead of dice rolling. In this case, the knife wielder shouldn't even need to roll. The threat is already mechanically enforced and can be acted on. If the player of the threatened NPC feels threatened (the wielder likely has the advantage in any potential combat), then they will have their PC act accordingly. The issue is that the threatened PC,i f the social sort, needs access to resources to counter said intimidation. For instance, if the threatened PC is the local crime lord, he needs to be able to say 'You better be good enough with that to finish the job, because if you ain't, my boys will find you and give you a personal demonstration on how to finish the job. If you just scram, maybe I will forget that this whole thing even happened.' Then he/she needs access to the resources to be able to back it up - the ability to command NPC thugs, resources he/she can offer to PCs as a bounty to kill the threatener, etc.

One method for resolving this is making PvP impossible except with GM approval for special cases. Now players cannot punch one another without OOC consent, so you don't have any issue.

If you want to keep PvP, I have an idea where social stats give access to resources. Instead of being able to roll dice that forces another PC to do something, instead the social started player can bribe the other character with those resources.

@Apos @faraday Measuring success by number of customers is a poor measuring stick really. Down that path lies conclusions such as McDonald's being a better restaurant than <insert your awesome local burger place here>. So anyone who says BSGU is a bad game because Arx has over 100 players can have their opinion written off. Instead look at how devoted and excited your players are to be playing. If they are having fun, you are having fun, and the cost of the server is covered, you have a successful game.

@GangOfDolls said in Active Games Of The Now?:

Did that replacement for Kushiel's Debut ever happen? I was kinda hoping it might just to try that world out but I'm guessing that it didn't come together, which happens.

They are still working on it, as far as I know.

Are has slowed down a bit. They are now at 2:1 speed and plot is not quite as hectic as it was.

@Thenomain My city has something like three clubs, one of which is the awesome gay club. However we have hundreds of bars, and it's a college town so "regulars" aren't much of a thing when the crowd is constantly changing every year.