Posts made by Packrat

@kanye-qwest I demand that you post a link to that short video you shared right after you got Braum. The one where he was being a very fierce puppy with a plush toy you that you were holding!

To everyone who finds themselves working from a picture or a 'played by' as a primary part of the process, was this something you started doing recently? Or did you also do that say, eight years ago before character wiki pages or 'played bys' were a common thing, just then not express it to the same degree?

I ask because to me it seems such an alien thing to have as a core part of making a character. At most I might glance around to see if there are any images that match the type of character I am making but even then I mostly fail to find a close match, shrug and continue with the written description.

I do not really play FPS very much personally but my little brother used to be in some kind of competitive 'Clan' and it was surreal to watch him play the Day of Defeat mod for the original Half Life. He had just played the game so much that he effectively had psychic powers when it came to knowing what other players would do or where they would go, either on his team or the opponents. He would play on public servers then restrict himself to using only hand grenades and spades with no guns and get an 8:1 kill ratio somehow.

He also used to set up surround sound in the living room and go absolutely ballistic if anyone dared speak or walk around when he was playing. Which was annoying.

I feel this is a benefit of games that are not set in the real world or a close facsimile of it, it is far easier to find in character prejudice, discrimination or bigotry an interesting hook for roleplay if these things are definitely not based on something that a player might be targeted for in reality.

To use my perennial example of Fading Suns. No characters are going to be biased against for being black, or gay, or female, or Polish.

Characters might well be targeted by deep prejudice for having space magic, being a non human alien or believing in democracy as a valid form of government.

The setting does also have a serious degree of class ism, a noble might well treat a peasant like scum, but by default player characters are members of the elite on some level. I am pretty sure that most players are not going to feel personally attacked because they are accused in character of 'Republicanism', the idea of a divinely ordained order in an agrarian feudal society is just too alien even if in character you get justifications like:

Would'st thou become kings among men? Look to your breeding first! The Pancreator has wisely separated the escola seeds from the husks, the pure from the base. Look instead to your fields, to your own harvests, that you might better reap the bounty of your own souls. Nay, sully not yourselves with the ways of man and power. Such a curse is not for you, happy in your ignorance. Let the cursed bear such burdens and reap as their rewards the wealth of the world. You humble have the wealth of the Empyrean coming to you. And yet still you envy those condemned to their worldly palaces, prisons of the soul.

Nobody is going to take that as the heartfelt view of a player leaking into the in character world. I hope.

Agreed there, some of of favourite Fading Suns RP for example was when I was playing a psi character with an obvious stigma and people actually responded to it negatively. Tarah on Star Crusade for example, she was an albino, she read people's minds all the time or fucked with people's emotions in council meetings to further her own agendas. Everyone was totally okay with her outside of a few instances.

Those instances where people were freaked out or nervous of her still stick in my memory years later.

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 now need to get a copy of a certain picture.

To explain, I visited my father and he had a black and white photograph on the wall of a man wearing a suit and a tophat. Whilst in the same room as my own father and whilst actively looking at him I assume this was a photograph of my dad, perhaps from a decade or two ago, wearing Victorian fancy dress for whatever reason.

No, this was a photograph from 1870 one of his friends had found and sent to him. Apparently my father either has/had a century older doppelganger in Belfast or he is a secret time traveler who gives no shits about posing for photographs.

It can get even weirder, at one point I was chatting with my then girlfriend about who should pay for meals after she made it very clear to me that she felt it was important she paid half even if she was a student and I had a decent job.

Her reasoning made pretty good sense but the conversation moved on to related subjects and also people we knew. Apparently one of her friends would use this to 'test' people she was dating, she would insist on paying for meals herself or splitting the bill but then if the man did not overrule her and pay anyway, despite her protests, she deemed them insufficiently chivalrous and would never see them again. Both of us agreed this was pretty crazy.

@rebekahse I think it fundamentally comes down to somebody playing a compelling character and that being a role they are playing the part of because it is interesting. The asshole character has to work harder at being genuinely intriguing and compelling because of the natural counter reaction against assholery and will of course still run into issues with characters who are simply player self projections.

But can lead to some really amazing roleplay when it is done right. Some of my most satisfying roleplay has been as genuinely religious characters for example. IRL I am agnostic but when a setting has religion in depth enough to convincingly play somebody who believes and can argue their faith? I find that a great mindspace to explore that leads to meaningful interactions and decisions. Not that I mean to conflate being religious with assholery but it can certainly be confrontational when contrasted with the mindset of 1st world internet nerds like ourselves.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately in the context of Fading Suns. Specifically, discrimination against psi powers. My experience on previous games has been that by and large nobody will discriminate against those with psi powers even though, in character, there are excellent reasons to do so.

It is not just down to medieval knee jerk 'burn the witch!' stuff which is certainly prevalent in setting, psi powers are genuinely terrifying even for the most educated and enlightened. That person with psi powers could well be reading your mind or 'pushing' at your emotions without your knowledge, they might be spying upon you with no possible way to detect it, etc.

There is literally no way to protect yourself outside of outrageously expensive and rare relic technology and for that matter? Psychics actually do go crazy and get possessed by or spawn the evil twin mirror version of themselves, so even your best friend might well act against you despite their will. That said how can you tell if they are really your best friend when they could potentially have edited your memories of them?

So how to encourage people to have such in character discrimination and worries whilst keeping it interesting for all involved?

To be fair, you can get away with your character being an asshole of some variety and have it work well on a MU*, but you generally need to be some kind of extroverted asshole and also manifest said asshole nature in a manner that is self depreciating and amusing for the other players.

Just being a huge jerk to people is unpleasant, being say, a huge jerk to commoners as a noble in a manner that makes it obvious you as the player think your character is a tool? That can work really well.

So, still in early access so I do hesitate to recommend it outright, but I picked up 'Dead Sky Derelicts' and rather love it.

Think a grungy retro-future Darkest Dungeons type affair with some amazingly well directed art and a cool core gameplay loop. You take a three person team through ancient space derelicts to loot them whilst constantly keeping an eye on your life support power, medical expenses being immensely expensive when people are inevitably injured.

The early access only has 2-3 hours of content but you can also only take three people out of six rather different classes, I actually played through the whole thing twice and very much enjoyed both times.

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.

I think another core issue with sci-fi is that there are hugely divergent opinions on what sci-fi is and if one person is operating under another set of assumptions to another? They are likely to clash.

If one person is expecting Star Trek, one is expecting Flash Gordon and another is expecting District 13? Non of the gut feelings those people have for how things work are going to be compatible in the slightest.

@auspice said in Original Sci-Fi?:

Did... did she not realize that was the point?

I know, they are ghosts. Still apparently not justified for Reasons though, I forget the precise Reasons.

@surreality said in Original Sci-Fi?:

Since this seems to be the #1 pastime of sci-fi games, I consider them an unfriendly environment on the whole, often to the point of active hostility and ugly condescension in the same way the people who are obscure comics lore experts railing about how so-and-so is 'doing it wrong' in their portrayal of a character are obnoxious, or it would be obnoxious for me to OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG SO STUPID DID YOU SEE THAT HEADPIECE?!?!?! WHAT SERVING GIRL CAN AFFORD THOSE PEARLS; THIS IS CRAZY! at people enjoying an episode of Reign, and modeling something they do on an L&L game on that dubiously accurate ensemble.

Gah, that reminds me of watching The Russian Ark with my mother, it is this absolutely insane experimental film that was recorded as a single 96 long minute sequence through the Winter Palace in St Petersburg. What did my mother, an expert on historical clothing, spend the entire time doing? Yes, complaining about how the costumes were from wildly varying periods and should not be next to each other.

Then again that is not entirely invalid for making a consistent and deep world for people to RP in, what people wear and when is a huge part of society and for that matter? Textiles were one of the major drivers for the non agricultural economy throughout most of history. If silk is imported from a foreign land who only take silver in payment and its popularity is driving a trade deficit/bullion shortage? That is meaty economic plot beyond 'Meet X for tea, agree to a handwaved trade deal, get some benefit', right there.

It is the same with tech in a sci-fi setting. Ideally you want enough top level detail to allow for emergent details and people to get their head into the setting, but you cannot go into too much detail because 1) People do not have time to read that shit or inclination to care and 2) Other people will care far too much and will pick apart every detail for inconsistencies that allow them some advantage.

Fading Suns avoids this in some ways, 99% of people in setting have no fucking idea of basic physics or chemistry, how electricity works is ICly something that is mostly limited to a secretive quasi religious mystery cult guild. Moreover, even if basic stuff like electrical lighting is pretty widespread outside of the peasantry, knowing how it works other than 'switch turns on light' is considered undesirable. Technology is seen as distracting you from the important stuff like spiritual harmony and the state of your soul and in that setting, where the suns are literally dying in an inexplicable and not at all natural manner that defies all laws of science?

That is a big deal!

But the player characters are not 99% of people and a good number of them will be members of various guilds, or educated by them. Also when trying to put together a living and consistent world you run into all sorts of questions. I mean aircraft are rare and expensive in setting, but how expensive, how rare? How expensive are helicopters compared to anti gravity bikes? Or spaceships? Can I have a holographic dress made of colour shifting space fabric? What fuel is being burnt in your Space Limo? (The answer to the last one is alcohol, of course there is no Space Oil on planets that have been inhabited for thousands of years, they use biofuels).

Though it does lead to awesome quotes like this one:

"And so it came to pass that (the Eskatonic mystic) Diophora, lecturing to (the tyrant) Kurgari'i Alecto, spake unto her, `Wilt thou be as the hovercraft, which, so long as the terrain is easy and sure, bears its master aloft on invisible wings of false hubris, detached thereby from man and Pancreator; but, upon coming to a great and lightless abyss, fails in its boastful endeavor, and sends both itself and its erstwhile suzerain spiraling down into the void?'"

So I am quite serious regarding this, do you want to see Fading Suns 2017 happen? Do you have ideas as to how it should happen?

Then message me. The more minds collaborating the better this is going to be and the more likely it will be 2017 rather than 2018. Even if you are not going to want to help staff the place I do want to avoid the issues previous FS games have had and ensure there are comprehensive systems in place prior to launch, this is not something which is going to work very well if I come up with stuff in a vacuum. Regardless of the improbable number of hours I have spent considering the issues with prior Fading Suns games whilst commuting.

IT , Do @monogram said in Original Sci-Fi?:

Anyone remember OtherSpace?

I do, it was my first MUSH and taught me so many things about how a MUSH should not be run, especially after I made the mistake of agreeing to join staff and saw behind the curtain.