Posts made by Packrat

@too-old-for-this As somebody who has had cats able to go outside whenever they want via cat flap, who have in some cases been prolific hunters? They continue to be derps even when they are devouring and torturing prey literally every day.

We had a pair of brothers when I was a kid who were confined to the kitchen, living room and conservatory (plus outside) at night, they were very determined to get into the rest of the house so that they could literally spend all night chasing each other up and down the stairs Extremely Loudly. Once they worked out how to get on the roof they would crouch outside of my bedroom window and shout at me for hours in the hope I would let them inside. If I did? They would then throw things off tables in the hope I would open my bedroom door and allow them access to the wonders of the stairs.

If I ever did this then everyone in the house regretted it.

Given what they look like now as babies they are going to have the most magnificent manes once they have grown up.

Some of the time is used just amazingly well though, the entire Salusa Secundus sequence is less than a minute long and yet tells you so much about the Sardaukar whilst 100% selling them as being terrifying when coupled with their later appearances.

Unfortunately the last picture I have of him. Not so little guy went missing while I was at work just over a month ago and there has been no sign of him since. He was allowed outdoors but typically never went more than a few houses and never crossed any roads, generally not gone for more than an hour or two at a time. (mostly he chased squirrels or played with my neighbor's kids).

He was my little buddy who would follow me around glued to my ankle, sleep cuddled up to my chin in bed every night and would happily spend hours a day in my lap or arms. Pretty sure he got stolen and although he is microchipped I suspect I will never see him again.

@arkandel said in Alternative Lords & Ladies Settings:

Another take on Lords and Ladies could be to introduce a level of strategic planning to it.

One of my peeves about settings like that, for some time, was that there was no cost to anything. Every other noble PC walks around throwing gold at problems; if Jane comes asking Jim for some ships to move her good he can just... give it since there's an inexhaustible supply. Here, have some imaginary ships, lady!

Similarly there's no downside in being nice. Hey peasants, I lowered your taxes! Love me! Which means playing cutthroat, cynical characters with an eye toward making money and using it to gain political advantages (think Littlefinger from Game of Thrones) doesn't give any edge over honorable ones (like Eddard Stark), and that ultimately cheapens both; honor is cheap without sacrifice, and bastardy is just dumb because... you act like an asshole IC yet get nothing to show for it.

I'd love to see a setting where clever players managing their estates well is meaningful and gets them the upper hand. Treating serfs well makes one popular - which grants bonuses - but empty coffers also translate to disadvantages that have to be played around.

Anyway. Lords and ladies. Resources. Meaningful choices. I'd like to see a good take on it.

One of the systems used on the Fading Suns game set on Vargo did this pretty well, basically you defaulted as a noble to having everything funded at the 'thoroughly mediocre' level when it came to loyalty of your people and vassals and that left you with a properly funded lifestyle for your rank along with some spending money but not a fortune. The moment you wanted to live in an extra fancy manner, or do well by your peasants, etc? You either needed to be excellent at managing your lands or obtain money from outside sources.

It ended up with things like one faction leader trying to sign a peace deal with the NPC neighbor and it being foiled because one of his baronesses was sending pirate ships to raid their coast and he had no idea it was going on. He thought the other party was making up coastal raids in order to try to get concessions but they were totally real and were making said baroness a ton of money.

I had a character who was held a senior military position and she was 100% embezzling the budget to help fund her personal goon squad of elite and ludicrously well paid murderers. They were just down the road from the palace where her boss lived though and so whilst he knew she was embezzling money he did not say anything due to being legitimately concerned about a coup.

It obviously had major problems but I loved how it rapidly turned landed nobles into money grubbing kleptocrats who would strike dubious deals with people and go into debt continuously. Successful military campaigns and sacking towns was also a great source of incoming if you could pull it off.

One thing that I do feel is valuable in a Lords and Ladies set up is a large population of NPC nobles and society. Then you can have people with social stats or plots influence things, or social pressures be applied, etc, without having to rely on player characters entirely.

Another consideration, for me at least? Player characters almost always have 'above average' stats and skills for good reason but if player characters then make up the entire structure of an inherited noble caste? That starts to create a world in which those of noble birth are inherently superior even if that was not the intention.

I am to be honest a big fan of making that kind of thing based on 'level' of nobility also, if you are a knight/dame? Be really good at stuff! There might well be thousands of NPC gentry and you are one of the people who stand out. Somebody is playing a duke or duchess? Have them given points to be statted like a vaguely kind of competent person because they are going to get plenty of spotlight and agency from their position and power. They do not also need to be a master duellist or peerless tactician or unmatched courtier, actually if they are merely decent at stuff then they have much more reason to want to recruit, retain the loyalty of and have to delegate power to other player characters.

Well I finally got blood work done and found out why I have been feeling so low on energy that I sleep 10-12 hours a day (whilst having a full time job). Apparently? Vitamin D deficiency. Not the best news but at least it is something I can easily treat with pills, thanks job that has been in an office with no natural light!

@ominous Witness the dread Hand Eater in all of his kitteny glory:

Hand Eater

My kitten Stentor has been... Growing, he is over eight months old now and has turned from this:

To this:

But he is still a cuddle monster:

Also he LOVES people, he spent a few hours today just playing with my eighteen month old niece beautifully and is happy to purr himself to sleep in a lap or in bed with me.

So is this still being worked on? I very much hope so because I would love to play on an Exalted game!

The ultimate confrontation between light and darkness, in my living room.

@ganymede I am selling a leasehold property with a mortgage, so £700-£1,000 is to be expected here. £1,600 is definitely an attempt to rip me off though.

Edit: There is a 20% VAT included in that.

Yes, recommended solicitors by the estate agent, of course nearly sixteen hundred pounds to process conveyance is 'very competitive'. No, please stop trying to tell me about all of the details of your fantastic deals because that is roughly double what it should be and I have literally no interest in hearing more of your spiel at this point.

I wonder how much they are kicking back to the estate agent in order to be the recommended solicitors.

Little Stentor likes to spend a good chunk of every day inside of any jacket or fleece I am wearing.

@surasanji I feel you would be better off setting the game itself on the coast of the Dreaming Sea and thus very much on or beyond the edge of Prasad influence? You could have dragon blooded PCs with their 'safe' area in the empire proper. Then a mixed area of vassal states, dependencies and similar with all sorts of adventure shenanigans going on and ability for celestials to operate but probably not set up a fixed public base if they do not want to be smashed by a hundred experience dragon blooded with a serious business army. But plenty of ability to adventure and clash with Prasad influence if they want.

Then extended adventure times areas beyond that where celestials can openly set up kingdoms or lead clans of wolf pirates or whatever. If you have celestials within Prasad itself then they are going to end up 1) A majority of the PCs (this will happen anyway) and 2) Probably running the place.

So regarding shopping carts, does the USA not have the thing where the carts have a chain and lock to each other, meaning you can only remove one from the stack by putting in a coin, that is then released when the cart is returned and chained back up again?

Here leaving a cart (or shopping trolley to use local parlance) rolling around the car park means you are leaving a £1 coin in it and so people rarely do such things.

3rd edition also does make things more... I want to say 'grounded' than 2nd edition? In 2E once exalts had some experience it started to make anything that was not powerful exalted increasingly irrelevant and pointless and that was very much to the game's detriment.

Solars in 3e are still tremendously powerful but things like having loyal mortal henchmen are legitimately valuable. A well established mortal sorcerer can be a meaningful ally, a squad of goons is a major force multiplier (if prone to being rapidly sworded) etc. There is no more mind controlling an entire civilisation by chatting with a beggar once a week and similar so you can actually have people acting within a (large) area and have things like the local societies matter longer term.

A group of starting Solars can absolutely still knock over a well armed city state in a single day but running it and keeping it secure will likely keep them occupied instead of everyone immediately becoming their slavish devotees instantly - even if they have a super demagogue they need to actually promise people stuff and work at it. (Even if not very hard).

I really feel that not allowing celestial exalted as PCs would be by far the best option.

Allow them as NPCs for specific plots or stories? Sure! They make great protagonists and similar, but they should not be anyone's main character unless you want things like people making 'placeholders' that they RP only until they can make a Solar or similar, with the dragonblooded PCs also then basically being allowed to continue living or achieving anything only according to the whims of experienced celestials.

To put things into perspective in my tabletop game we had a starting Solar fight a duel against an Essence 3 dragon blooded who had mastered a martial art (a good one! Shining Point) and had probably over a hundred experience points spent in total. This duel was completely and totally one sided with the outcome never in doubt. It is not as bad as in 2e where above a certain point a Solar could render irrelevant dozens of dragon blooded but the power differential is still huge. An equivalent experience Solar is very much a 'boss battle' for an entire well coordinated brotherhood of five Dragon Blooded.

@greenflashlight If it helps, this was him earlier today while I was trying to work and suddenly had a little friend pop up over the monitor:

I got a new kitten just before Christmas. Unfortunately he came with awful diarrohea and I was for a few days unsure he would make it, I am also down about (translates) $500 in vet bills whilst awaiting test results. But? He is super cute and super affectionate, he basically purrs the moment you touch him and will immediately climb into anyone's lap.

Eventually he made friends with Artemis, though she does find him annoying when he goes into Zoom Mode and desires endless play.

Also he loves to climb into my jacket and purr himself to sleep.