Posts made by Packrat

@Roz

It must have been because of that adorable video Tristram posted, the only possible explanation.

Did the game just implode for anyone else?

@Catsmeow said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

LinkedIn really does cover EVERY vocation, doesn't it?

Shit like this is why I do not share my RL name with people from mushes unless I have known them for at least a decade, LinkedIn is important! Being headhunted on that site is responsible for a significant chunk of my income.

I did do a fair bit of work on a Fading Suns game, with maps, writeups, etc for the local setting, but although there was plenty of interest in playing on such a game there was no real interest in helping with staffing one. A lot of it was very deliberately in a different style to the previous games with things probably closer to turn of the century Russian Empire rather than outright medieval, a lot more technology and a larger scale plus distinctly more 'Space', rather than everything being outright medieval and entirely local.

If anyone is interested then I would be happy to try to dig up said files and send them over, or collaborate.

On the plus side, Custodius is hilariously terrible at politics so if anyone wants to act -against- him IC then it should be easy enough. Just play a female character then get him to agree to terrible shit that is absolutely not in his interests whilst letting him think that he is persuading you how awesome he is.

I recommend looking at something like Burning Empires for some ideas on how to handle 'Big Picture' events where everyone has an excuse to get involved using a myriad of different skills and make a real difference, along with preventing whomever has the biggest dice from just dominating each instance.

So even if you are dealing with a straight forward battle it would not be two people rolling Charisma+Command and Intelligence+War vs each other or whatever, come up with a number of different maneuvers which use different skills and different purposes along with combat being about winning via strategic disposition points rather than simulating 3000 people sticking swords into 3000 other people. I mention Burning Empires because the system is really abstract but infinitely scale-able, it can work for a skirmish between a few dozen raiders or for a gigantic confrontation and battles do not have to involve much direct combat - you could win entirely through out maneuvering the enemy and achieving your objectives without fighting, or win whilst suffering horrible casualties but end up holding the field or vice versa.

So you might find that the enemy right flank are charging you and decide to try to lure them into a trap using a different set of skills (deception or subterfuge or whatever), perhaps one character has high Heraldry and can thus assist through recognizing the lords leading the attack and knowing about their personalities and tendencies giving a bonus in the process. Hell, maybe the person with high Sewing and Heraldry could quickly knock up fake banners by realizing that a quick modification makes your coat of arms look like the one the enemy are expecting to come as reinforcements, so that when you attack their flank they believe they have been betrayed and fleet? Let people be creative.

Has anyone else been playing Tyranny? Shorter then a regular sprawling CRPG but I loved the way it actually lead to me roleplaying and it seems extremely re playable.

Plus the setting is neat as hell.

@bored said in The 100: The Mush:

@GirlCalledBlu

I honestly don't remember the Fifth World stuff too well in terms of which characters were what, only that I had a hard time getting a piece of the plot despite having a character who for all intents and purposes made a lot of sense to be highly involved (one of the oldest PCs, head of minor house responsible for a lot of shipbuilding, denied having any kind of position in the fleet administration and told to 'work toward it' in a vague way despite the guy being in his late 40s or 50s, IE presumably mid career at least). My perception was less of specific staffer malfeasance (although I did remember a lot of eye-rolly very public relationship spectacle stuff) as it being a lot of RP among friends and outsiders just being kind of clueless on what to do at all.

This matches pretty well with my experiences on The Fifth World, I played Alexis, she was a cousin to the royal family and experienced military leader in her 50's but had to be a 'Knight Lieutenant', in command of a few dozen people at most, because apparently player characters were not allowed to have real influence or power. The thing is, that was despite the fact there were plenty of player characters who were the heads of noble houses or ducal heirs with literally thousands of troops and country sized domains under their control.

Obviously people who had ten thousand minions, many of whom were almost as capable as a really focused player character, still had the same number of points for their +sheet and had much more plot involvement as well in general. It just did not seem to make much sense, if one person can be a Count why cannot another person be a General, or the head of Fleet Procurement, or whatever? Not to mention if all senior nobility are PCs/NPCs played as PCs, especially in a feudal system, why should they be just as capable as the person playing a Space Knight with nothing particular going for them apart from their raw ability and PC Aura?

Now in my case I was hardly shut out of plot, Alexis was actually in command of all of the player characters and their part of the fight during the first big battle with the cyborg invader people. She was the royal heir's aunt who remembered them being toddles and they came to her for advise sometimes, etc. Everything still felt very much on rails though and I eventually stopped playing despite otherwise having fun.

I did read the first few books and I do not think it was a case of one angel birth a decade across the whole world. I mean angels are rare, but not impossibly so and at one point the main character encounters a sort of primary school class of angels which is fairly populated.

One angel birth a century for an actively trying couple certainly fits, but not for their entire society. If it was one birth a century worldwide or even one per decade then they would probably have died out a long long time ago through a combination of infighting and accidents. Adult angels are hard to kill outright but they are not all that difficult to cripple/incapacitate even through things like accidents or crashes in flight.

The dice system they are using on Arx seems interesting, it is not documented but they did explain it on channel at one point.

Attributes are 1 to 5, Skills are 1 to 6. When you roll, you roll a number of 1d10 equal to Attribute + Skill +1, with 10's exploding infinitely (Roll a 10, roll another 1d10 and add, etc).

You then keep Skill+1 of these dice, the ones that rolled the highest results, combining them for your final result.

Skill levels are thus huge and by far the most important part but natural talent does help, especially when it comes to getting consistent results at low skill levels.

I just checked, he had four companies of troops. Admittedly they were all very mobile troops thanks to being armour and mechanized infantry, which was cool, but I think all companies were basically the same in combat power, good troops with a slight edge.

Some baronies could field six companies of troops, Karl had like, 14 companies.

Regarding Caelwyn, from what I remember the reason he had so many troops (and he did not really have that many, I think he had about as many as a particularly dangerous baron?) Was that he was a Count and had gone into MegaDebt to fund his crusading. Like, all of his land belonged to Space Loan Sharks.

This was on Fading Suns MUSH/Vargo years before Star Crusade, which if anything makes it more mind boggling given that used a 1d20 system where the most skilled PCs failed somewhere around 20% of the time.

For some reason that reminds me of a particular person who kept plaguing Fading Suns games (I think she also played Shadowrun Denver?) years ago.

She wrote amazing character applications, really really good applications which were in the form of full length novellas that were well enough written to be a pleasure to read along with demonstrating a great feel for the theme. In play? Her poses were great, she had clever ideas, but if anything did not go her way she would go absolutely ballistic and screech endlessly about it. She would occasionally throw out some weird pose mid scene where she did four or five things that should each be a full action then would argue endlessly if she failed rolls or was not allowed to say... Jump onto a horse, ride a hundred yards through a crowd, block a sword blow, then attack somebody, before the other person could hit somebody standing in front of them with a sword.

She also had kinky sex with everything that had a pulse, which is fine, but if this caused any kind of blow back (Say, somebody found out IC that she was cheating on them with six other people and were unhappy) then she would also lose it OOCly.

So I am trying this game and it seems pretty great so far, obviously no Big Plot happening but whilst the Firan-isms are weird the quality of RP is high while the overall setting and direction look good.

That is what I am working on for the (eternally still in progress) Space Nobles game I am still plodding through planning out, FUDGE dice mechanics with a momentum/initiative system stolen or at least heavily influenced by Exalted 3e.

So you roll to attack, with modifiers to the roll for equipment/circumstances, net successes +1 is added to your Momentum for the fight. Narratively, you are shooting at somebody and forcing them to take cover, pressing them in a sword fight, etc. Minor injuries might take place but nothing significant.

You can instead on your turn choose to spend Momentum points to try a more decisive attack where, depending on how many points you spend, you can disarm them on a success, or wound them, grapple them, etc. If you succeed then the Momentum is all gone, if you fail then you lose a few points but could potentially try again. Wearing armour does not inherently defend against a Decisive attack, it defends against regular attacks as you are (potentially much) harder to disadvantage because you can take more risks and ignore more threats. But if somebody has you pinned and is sticking a knife into your eye or has lined up a shot on your head or whatever then it no longer matters.

Another thing that works great with Exalted 3e is that it does not mechanically matter how you launch Decisive attacks in a lot of circumstances along with Withering attacks being highly narrative. My tabletop game saw somebody build up initiative through sword fighting a foe then, when they tried to flee, finish them with a thrown javelin to the back.

The javelin did not have anything like the weapon stats of the character's magic sword but the threat of said magic sword had allowed them to take control of the fight. They were swinging it with intent to kill but presumably connecting with punches, kicks or slams of the pommel as their enemy desperately defended themselves.

@Seraphim73 I agree entirely, the main idea is to give people stuff to compete over and disparate objectives rather than building it into their background that they super hate another faction. I am still working on writing up the 'Major Houses' but a key idea is that whilst they are all rivals they are on the 'same side' in principle, the Imperial Navy is largely full of minor house members who are seeking reward through Imperial favour, they have access to disproportionately powerful Hypertech starships, will tend to be well trained and capable military leaders, command crack fleets and elite troops, but not much in the way of actual income/support to replace losses or keep that stuff going.

The Great Houses want conquered fiefs to belong to them and their relatives and obviously want to hand as few resources as possible over to Imperial authorities, minor houses want to try to persuade somebody to try to give their family fiefs in their own right and want to try to show the Imperium how totally more bad ass and awesome and willing to supply people they are so that they should be favoured (The Imperium is more inclined to give them power given they have less ability to leverage it also) – alternatively they might strike more local or individual deals with Major Houses (Like, I am a totally amazing admiral! I will command your fleet and swear allegiance to you if you give me the moon of Idriss VII as my personal fief).

Fiefs (and hypertech starships) are relatively expensive each to get in character generation and (for fiefs) now come in three simple levels, Rich, Average and Poor, any fiefs beyond the first only give half income due to inefficiencies.

Conquering more from the Enemy is absolutely a thing, but actually conquering rather than raiding a fief is a drawn out and potentially expensive process, the Enemy are not pushovers and fixed defences are disproportionately powerful, plus as mentioned above stacking multiple holdings does not work too well, you need to delegate or help acquire holdings in return for future payment.

ADDED: Also, now that the setting is more defined, some notes:

The Space Nobles of the sort played by PCs are distinctly different from the 'Core World' Space Nobles of the Imperium and also have almost no contact with them directly, the Conquering Houses were deliberately formed from spare heirs and younger siblings a few hundred years ago, genetically enhanced to and beyond the peak of human potential as the instruments of 'The Liberation', the centuries long crusade to reclaim the Human Sphere from 'The Enemy', the AI in Space Elf form who rule the hundred thousand worlds of humanity.

Nobles of the Conquering Houses are implanted with 'The Armature' in puberty, a complex series of physical and mental cybernetic enhancements that render them utterly lethal and incredibly capable. This is a very expensive process that would kill the vast majority of humans due to incompatibility but gifts them with the ability to pick up new skills rapidly, inhuman endurance, the ability to perceive time subjectively slower and respond with incredible speed, etc, it basically makes them superhuman in most ways. It also dramatically cuts lifespan, most humans live to about 120, with the best healthcare they can live to 200, Space Nobles remain physically capable until the end of their lives but tend to die at around sixty if they survive that long. In an intensely military culture with a duelling tradition that is actually rather rare.

There are rare baseline humans capable of surving implantation of the Armature, but not all want it and it is very expensive, the few who both merit and welcome the process are then competed for by the nobility as prized champions even as they are despised for their base origin.

The reward that the Conquering Houses receive is both exaltation as liberators and heroes, and the right to rule the worlds and star systems they 'Liberate', now, The Enemy is brutal, amoral and ruthlessly exploitative, most people are glad to be liberated from the AI, but Space Nobles still live in unimaginable luxury as payment for their sacrifice in being scions of the Conquering Houses.

@Bobotron Thanks for that, though the site is down at the moment and has been for a while.

On a more general note what are people's thoughts regarding the number of 'Factions' within the Space Nobles? Too many (ie Fading Suns) is liable to lead to people being too spread out but too few limits options. At the moment I am thinking three 'Major Houses', who are intended to be the main power blocks, plus the Imperial Navy as another and the Imperial Administration as a kind of quasi-other – mostly something members of the other groups compete over control for.

Then perhaps five 'Minor Houses', who are not power players themselves so much as groups people can belong to whilst also then allying with one of the more major powers, most Imperial Navy officers should be minor house members but Major Houses should have an interest in trying to persuade Minor House PCs to back them up in return for stuff.

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: