Best posts made by Packrat

One piece of advise regarding magical items that boost stats.

Please resist the temptation to have items that boost a stat but do so 'secretly' so that 'nobody can work it out'.

I can guarantee that if you make a ring (or a nipple ring) that gives +1 Luck but does not announce this then that mostly means that its secret powers will only be unlocked by assholes who are willing to equip items then +roll three hundred times in their bedroom before loading the results into a spreadsheet and comparing to the unassisted statistics.

It would probably result in a subset or clique of players who do that kind of thing and fairly rapidly know the precise stats of every magical item they retrieve whilst other people flail blindly and feel useless.

To be fair and as mentioned above, in the books, there were multiple characters able to overpower one of the Forsaken in a direct head on fight, even early on.

But the Forsaken have absolutely no interest in risking things in head on personal confrontation, they have long term plans and know a ton of really scary magical shit that you do not. They can mind control people, they can wear magical disguises, they can basically teleport. You cannot do that stuff (probably) or even know that anyone is around who can. That is where they are actually powerful.

If one of the Forsaken just barreled in going 'Rarr, fear me!' without planning then a random circle of random Aes Sedai could pretty easily overpower and defeat one.

@kanye-qwest The writing and tone is definitely all over the place there with things like female characters who have legitimate agency and personality then sort of drop out of the plot or change completely once things move into a different storyline.

The white part though? That is just weird, and I do not mean your bringing it up but the whole situation around the game. There being only 'white people' (of various different actual ethnicity and origins) in a small patch of rural 1403 Bohemia? Sure! I would honestly not be surprised if you checked the same area IRL right now and only found 'white people'. My grandfather grew up in eastern Europe and literally never met a non white person until he was captured by American soldiers at the end of World War 2.

That does not mean that the lead developer is not apparently a racist though.

Another option could be charging the AP to the person being healed, on the basis that they are straining themselves by pushing on when they really should not, damaging their body and needing more 'time off' to recover after the adventure is over?

There is basically nothing stopping an Aes Sedai from just, well, grabbing somebody with air though.

It works every time against somebody who is not a channeler then they are completely helpless, being able to do it to multiple people at once requires a particularly capable channeler sure but it is still an automatic win against anyone who does not ambush you.

@rnmissionrun Ahh, I will work on adjusting that before trying again then, thanks!

One issue is that FS has each 'attack' keyed against a specific defense roll/skill but there should probably be multiple ways to defend against a lot of stuff.

If somebody chucks a fireball at you then you can try to cut the weave to mitigate it entirely, or block it with a shield of air, or if you are not a channeler you might be able to dodge it? Though mostly you get burninated.

I have quit too many games to remember due to timezones. It is immensely frustrating to be on a huge populated game where people really like your character and work to include you, but actual meaty RP or plots only begin to start at about two in the morning.

That might have worked when I was a student but as an adult I need my sleep schedules and have to be functional for work.

@thenomain I came up with the best solution to this issue.

I booked all of next week off work along with buying sufficient nice bottled beers and ales to fill an entire cupboard in my kitchen.

Next week I am going to do nothing but read, game, go for long walks then every evening try a few new beers.

I totally want feathery wings as well, from what I have read so far, they can even be pretty colours instead of all being white or something.

I really wished as original-Cristoph I had gotten to interact with Gabriel more, we only ran into each other once pretty briefly but I imagine they would have gotten on really well given how serious I was playing Cristoph as.

Well, outside of the spending so much gold on parties thing, but that was serious! Very important to make social contact and positive impressions on people in the capital.

Added: No idea how Cristoph might be now! I mean I stopped playing him like nine months ago so whoever took him over has had the character and developed him for longer.

I found by mid game that I was running 7-8 pilots and mechs, it costs a little more but the ability to go straight into missions without waiting if you get something shot up or a pilot put out of action for a few weeks is more than worth it.

Also, crucially, it means you have trained up replacements for if some asshole in a walking center torso does a Death From Above and smashes the head of an untouched heavy mech, taking a highly skilled mechwarrior to the grave in the process.

@ixokai A good point, I remember running into somebody playing a British person on a MUSH once who somehow got the idea that we call ambulances 'Hospital Lorries', which was hilarious but not very accurate.

Give the example that @bored gave about Star Crusade earlier in the thread this is something I have been thinking about a lot for any new Fading Suns game, also keep in mind stuff that I observed on Arx.

To start with I am looking at having a much flatter structure for feudal/whatever power holders. On Arx a baron gets pretty much the same ways to interact with the economy/systems as a duke but with smaller numbers, all dukes report to a head of house whilst having marquis level nobles reporting to them, etc. This is both not very interesting and pretty weird if trying to emulate any kind of actual feudal hierarchy and its snakepit messiness. Playing a duke I ran into a fair bit of griping from say, counts about how poor and unimportant they were, let alone barons. Anyone not a landed noble was basically not on the scale at all outside of the head of church guy, who was an NPC who then politically shot the faction in the head before being replaced. It was all very dependent upon having a head of 'faction' (High Lord tier) who was active and you got along with and people were almost inevitably super in lockstep with said person as a result.

So my plan is basically two 'tiers' of IC power holder. You can have a 'minor benefice', which means you spend points in character generation to get a small income of abstracted strategic resources (Cash, Manpower, Industry, Influence, Technology, etc). At this point you are very much not a 'power player' but could be a landed knight, a rich priest, a guilder with investments, or perhaps somebody with offworld assets who has diverted significant resources to their benefit whilst they do stuff 'here'.

Or you have control of a full on 'Benefice', which could be controlling a barony or county, being a bishop, controlling a major business, being a mayor, etc. These are all pretty much on the same tier with the richest perhaps 2.5 times the income of the poorest and the things bought using character generation points. There are also ICly a lot of people at this level, a few hundred, meaning that the vast majority will be NPCs presumed to exist and able to be persuaded to actually help or hinder using Influence.

A count is only really different from a baron in that they have a benefice giving (most of the time) more income and also a half dozen baronies loosely affiliated with them, these baron tier people nominally owe them a certain degree of military service but in turn a count has a higher military obligation to their liege. Not all barons report to a count rather than a duke, hell, not all feudal benefices are owned by a baron, you can be a knight and have one if your title is rich but not titled, a landless count, or an abbot with feudal obligations for your monasteries' land grant.

So, effectively, no 'hard' factions. The bishop of Ramlah, the Count of Ramlah, the various guild leaders of Ramlah and the landed nobility of the county? They are not at all assumed to be working together. If the Count turns out to be useless then one of the barons or baronesses can step up easily enough, or perhaps the Bishop gets things done, or perhaps everyone raids each other, goes into debt and ends up owned by the Reeve Director.

All Hawkwoods? Definitely not assumed to be working together. Any positions above 'I have a benefice that is particularly rich' would come down to ducal positions, being a general or admiral, treasurer, etc. The intent is very much for these to be appointed or voted on, temporary and volatile.

Top level leadership being mostly NPC at least to start with, in the form of two (Well, three counting offworld) ducal titles and the archbishop but the most relevant duke being largely incapable. Plus a city council running the capital/main play area, which would likely be PC dominated.

So essentially not putting some people at the top out of character generation because they applied for an empty slot and trying to avoid any character becoming a 'bottleneck' unless they can be easily ICly replaced. If some knight manages to wangle a position of 'Lord High Admiral' then fails to keep their peers happy about it? Then they can and will be replaced.

I have actually been revisiting Divinity Original Sin 2 multiplayer with my brother and one of my friends, we just finished Act 1.

I had forgotten how fun the game was and how in depth things get, also how hilarious/amusing it is when somebody accidentally heals the undead character or 'accidentally' unleashes some manner of horrific elemental conflagration that ignites two other players' characters.

I feel that everyone is missing the important part of the wiki, it needs to have a template so that people can colour in their pretty pretty feathered wings. Here we go:

@Pyrephox Ooh, the excommunication thing made perfect sense, it was the not-pope throwing somebody off a bridge that was the 'shot in the head'. Before that I know my character was frankly pretty much in agreement with the church. I mean believing the word of demonstratively asshole elves that the human sacrifice was necessary or useful to anyone other than elf assholes always struck him as pretty deeply suspect.

Every time people act like that in some manner of gaming forum (not just forums, I mean as in venue for communication) I think back to when I played Guildwars 2 after launch.

I was in one of the top competitive guilds for World v World v World PVP, we were the main force on our server and our server kept bouncing between positions 2 and 3, every time we got into no 2 we would be up against the dread power of the French and their French Canadian allies and be knocked back to the no 3 slot.

Still the main person who lead us in battle, coordinating merciless offensives and herding the swarm of cats that was a huge MMO guild? She was a 40 something nurse with a broad Brummie accent and an endless supply of amazing curses who did not take any shit from anyone.

That was fun, especially when he responded actually antagonistically to the whole 'We used to raid each other' thing. Raiding people and stealing their livelihoods in a subsistence farming economy is serious business!

My goals for 2018:

• Start actually playing on a game, even if only at low activity levels. Maybe give Arx another go? Tempted to make a Whisper so that I can do the social and event running stuff without having the responsibility of being a duke like when I played it last.

• Get New Fading Suns MUSH launched. It is actually looking doable, a ton of work done, a grid, an awesome person actually doing code (Holy shit I failed at trying to even port in the Star Crusade code with full access to the database). Then like, run the place and hopefully make it cool instead of falling into the pit of previous Fading Suns attempts.