You might be able to do a variation of my "every character is permanently on the roster and you just get to play them for as long as your logged in" idea. Players can have one character that is solely theirs. All non-exclusive characters (let's call the exclusive ones Feature Characters) are permanently on the roster and anyone can take them for a spin on a given night; however, they can only take non-FCs that belong to their FCs organization/house or non-FCs that are unaffiliated.
Posts made by Ominous
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RE: Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings
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RE: FFG L5R
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.
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RE: FFG L5R
I have not read the Shadowlands book, but I am guessing it's something akin to Mousegard and other settings of that sort - a group of warriors trying to maintain peace and life while beset by an implacable other encroaching from the borders with the occasional infighting and cult. Assuming that is correct, I have said for a while that that would be a bomb-ass setting.
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RE: Dead Celebrities 2021 Edition
Ehhh, it's not a wildly divergent evolution of the word in this case. The Romans were kidnapping the women to marry them, the Romans weren't going to take no for an answer when it came time for the marriage ceremonies, and the Romans were definitely going to consummate the marriages, so the Rape of the Sabines still is an accurate title for the historical event.
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RE: Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings
Absolutely. I pushed for this without much luck on a few L&L games. It's hard to RP trade deals and such when there is no actual mechanical basis for it. It's sort of the opposite of the problem with some Euro board games that have weak flavor and all you're doing is just pushing around cubes with one another. I want the crunch and the fluff!
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RE: Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings
@runescryer said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:
The only caveat would have in regards to a Blue Rose game would be around the Rhydians; intelligent animals that hace the same status and capability as people in the Kingdom. Yes, you can play a wolf, horse, or large cat (about bobcat size) that is intelligent, has telepathy, and can bond with a humanoid. It's really Mercedes Lackey's Valdemar with the serial numbers filed off. I have no issues at all with this.
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RE: Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings
Thank you. And my post wasn't challenge; it was a request, in case you felt I was disputing your claim. The thread is about discussing alternatives, and it helps if people elaborate on what those alternatives involve.
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RE: FFG L5R
I hear you. But it is not so easy to cut them out. So you have to have a robust, enforceable system. And if you don’t, you are killing the setting.
It’s baked in. That’s my point, if I had one.
That's my point as well. Dismissing the social systems in L5R is missing a massive part of the setting. As it is based on an amalgam of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Mongolian cultures, though predominantly Japanese, etiquette, customs, social niceties, and the subtle meaning of minor actions are all very important things. Sometimes more so than combat, magic, or subterfuge skills. This is a game with a Tea Ceremony skill for goodness sake. An entire skill devoted to performing a tea ceremony, because it's of such import to the culture of the setting.
So, yeah, if you're going to eject social mechanics from L5R, you are clearly doing a disservice to the setting.
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RE: Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings
Please elaborate on how L5R differs from standard L&L fare.
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RE: FFG L5R
Courtiers are quite literally one-third of the entire game. You can't just write them out.
Then create and support mechanics for them to do things that non-courtier characters can't. If you're not going to do that, cut them from the MU. It's a simple binary choice. No one wants to play a useless character. Well, almost no one. I dabble in useless idiots.
Cue the social combat holy war. Or just copy paste from the countless other times we've gone round and round and round on this.
No. No, social combat holy war here. I'm not saying you must have social combat on all MU*s. I am saying that, IF you make a social archetype available, you MUST supply a means to make that archetype viable in relation to other archetypes.
I run an old-school D&D game. There are no social rolls and there are no bards or other classes that fit the courtier archetype. The only "social rolls" that exist in that game are morale checks for monsters and hirelings, a charisma check when someone tries to hire hirelings to see if the hireling will work for the offered pay, and rolling to try to haggle a merchant, which is essentially the same as hiring hirelings. Everything else is played out. You want to bluff the guard that you are totally invited to the party even though you have no invitation in hand? You, as the player, need to tell me what your character says and does and I, as the GM, will decide if it's believable. I might roll some dice if I decide that it's questionable whether or not your words and actions are on the edge of being good enough.
However, if the group were to suddenly jump to new-school D&D or L5R, we'd be playing with the social rules from those games, because those games have characters that fill a social role, and I don't want to tell one of my players "Sucks that you picked a bard and dumped a bunch of points into bluff and diplomacy. I'm never going to ask you to roll those skills."
EDIT: And it doesn't have to be a social combat system or anything like that. For other games with courtier players, I have suggested stealing ideas from board games. Have different overarching influence groups like "The Peerage," "The Underworld," "The Merchants," "The Peasants" or whatever, and players can put skill points into those categories. Every week or month or whatever, the player is awarded a number of cubes (remember, we're stealing from board games) for those groups based on their skill. The cubes can be traded with other players, but there could be another social skill that determines a maximum number of cubes a player can hold without excess cubes being discarded at a slow rate, say 1 cube a day or something, until the number of cubes is under the maximum "hand size." Cubes can then be used to pay for attempts to influence the NPCs of each group. Want the third estate to support your idea of guillotines and suddenly shorter nobles? Bid your cubes and make some rolls to see if you make headway or lack-of-headway in that particular case.
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RE: Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings
Fucking yes. Every time someone says Friends or Seinfeld was the best sitcom of the '90s, I reply "You apparently have never seen Wings."
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RE: FFG L5R
If you don't want to roll social contests or have some other mechanics that social characters have exclusive proficiency at interacting with, then stop making a "social sphere" or courtier characters a thing in MUs. It's like saying "Mages are a thing!" then providing no mechanics for using magic.
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RE: FFG L5R
Yeah, but just because anyone can enter a talking scene scene, doesn't mean they should actually talk. If you have an audience with the Emerald Champion, you want the good with words guy to go be good with words.
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RE: Good Anime
I'll be honest. The trailer for it always made it seem like some pretentious hipster cartoon.
Cat with an attitude? Check.
Cat with attitude talks in weird noises that requires subtitles to understand? Check.
Main human character is a directionless millenial woman stereotype? Check.
Both main characters have weird names that make sure to stick out from the list of other shows? Check.
Trailer music is simple, muted guitar strumming with occasional crisp sound effects? Check.
Main characters lead normal lives in a normal world but appear to occasionally go on adventures across time and space? Check. -
RE: Favorite Youtubers?
As a former cop, I concur. There were many times I thought, "Just shut the fuck up and let me do my job."
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RE: Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings
That's a very different take on the usual L&L formula. I kind of like it, even if I don't like Supers servers.
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RE: Dead Celebrities 2021 Edition
I never really found him that funny, but I have to admit that that's some damned good dark humor.