A lot of the role of a grid in providing a common point of reference, and a shared world to play in, and familiar scene backdrops, can probably be replaced by a solid wiki, maps, pictures, etc. Arranging these reference points in a conventional grid isn't mandatory.
I am used to grids, and I like them just fine, but I would love to see different approaches.
The main reason I don't do comics games is because of FCs, so I would totally give this a try!
I think I would prefer a modern setting over anything historical. Partly because I might not want to deal with the bigotry, even if this is somewhat mitigated by the fact I'd be playing some kind of super character. Mostly because I'd just have an easier time of it not having to worry about major anachronisms.
And, really, noir can be pretty diverse if that's what you're going with.
Unless a game has a really, really focused theme and a system built around it, that's likely going to happen. And if there is, it needs to be pretty explicit: "This is the type of story we want to run, and we are only taking characters that make sense for it."
I like slice of life RP, social RP (this includes all the TS all the time), and character exploration in any given setting. That's my jam, regardless of everything else. Adventure, politics, etc, are all great and necessary, but if I don't have some kind of investment in the character, which is provided by the quiet social stuff, I just probably won't care that much. So at least I feel like there should be room for that, or I just won't play.
However, I am fine with the staff-driven plotty adventure stuff being very focused, and with staff asking players to work with them to enforce the themes they'd like to explore.
I like it.
I am not sure that RL diversity of different areas is that important, since the Fallout timeline diverges long before the bombs fell. As long as you use some local flavor for inspiration and interesting themes to play with, you have a lot of leeway there. You can even have random oirish people.
But when is the game set? That's at least as important as where.
The first things that come to mind are Western and Fallout, but I repeat myself. Because I feel like Fallout is at its best when it kinda feels like a western.
I can also speak to the game being fun. I've had some nice social scenes to help my character situated. But also, my first actual event on Halloween was a lot of fun, and very tense at times. And a lot of hesitation between 'I declare running away, forever' and having the character stick around trying to do something.
I've had a few. A couple of times I actually started the characters married, or in on-off relationships. The latest was over a RL year, but the characters couldn't actually get formally married for IC Lords & Ladies reasons, but it was a marriage as far as my character was concerned.
In non-roster games, which is the majority of games I've ever played, the main issue can be if the other player stops playing or idles out without closure. A couple of my IC marriages may have technically lasted RL years, but hardly count for that reason. In one case, it made my character pretty much unplayable, but that was a very specific situation. I still don't regret it, though. The RP and the character arc leading there wouldn't have been possible without it.
@coin said in Spotlight.:
@peasoupling said in Spotlight.:
I don't know! Sometimes I think I might prefer playing a janitor with a real chance at meaningfully affecting the cleanliness levels of the Death Star than playing a pilot who is basically just set dressing in a battle they have no real chance of affecting in any meaningful way, other than by exploding prettily against a backdrop of stars.
I am not going to read farther ahead but I want to ask if this reference is on purpose or if you just stumbled right into basically a dig at how someone in maintenance can become the hero of the galaxy because, uh, fucking Finn "Sanitation" FN-2187.
Just sayin'.
It was totally an accident.
@faraday said in Spotlight.:
@peasoupling said in Spotlight.:
It really does depend on how far we stretch the analogy, I guess. Is the battle solely dependent on Luke's rolls? Does anything change at all if Porkins actually takes out those tie-fighters?
It really does, and I'm not meaning to tunnel vision on this particular analogy. But I think it's useful, because it deals with the aspect of having realistic expectations.
Let's say that 12 people show up for the Death Star battle MU scene. I think it's utterly impractical to give all of them Luke levels of impact. But if only one of them gets the killing blow on the Big Bad, does that mean that everyone else is just window dressing? And how many Epic Big Bads can you really expect a game to have, if you expect staff to spread the Hero Time around?
Well, I don't need to play Luke, at all. I'd probably rather not, most of the time. So I'm not really asking who gets the killing blow, that's not so much the issue for me, unless it's always Luke.
My question is: Is it even possible for one of the other ones to get the killing blow? If not, can they make it easier for Luke to get the killing blow in a meaningful way? Can they mitigate negative consequences, reduce losses, whatever? If not, then no, just participating isn't special at all. In a movie, having a few lines is all you need, but in a game, if there's no chance to affect the outcome beyond your own personal existence, you're not so much a secondary character, you're an extra. And that's never special.
@faraday said in Spotlight.:
Back up though... if this were a MUSH scene and not an already-written movie script (which I know makes it an imperfect example), who says that Porkins couldn't affect the battle in any meaningful way? I mean, yes, only one person can score the WINNING hit on the exhaust port, but it's not like everyone else is just sitting around twiddling their thumbs. There are TIE fighters to take out, turrets to dodge...
It really does depend on how far we stretch the analogy, I guess. Is the battle solely dependent on Luke's rolls? Does anything change at all if Porkins actually takes out those tie-fighters?
"Participating in the final epic battle" can be special, but not if you're so focused on the Luke level of things that everything else is just kinda there to be decorative. If Porkins's actions can have meaningful consequences, even if it's very unlikely they'll say whether the battle is won or lost, that's great.
@faraday said in Spotlight.:
But setting aside the whole "they all got killed" thing, I do think that being one of the few pilots in the rebellion who get to participate in the final epic battle against the Death Star is a "special" thing.
I don't know! Sometimes I think I might prefer playing a janitor with a real chance at meaningfully affecting the cleanliness levels of the Death Star than playing a pilot who is basically just set dressing in a battle they have no real chance of affecting in any meaningful way, other than by exploding prettily against a backdrop of stars.
@faraday said in Spotlight.:
@surreality points out that even second-tier characters in GoT get their moments sometimes, and that's true, but nobody(*) >wants to only get one or two cool things to do over the lifespan of their character. They want to be Daenerys or Jon Snow.
It just doesn't work. Starring roles are limited. Everybody(*) desperately wants one, and then they get bent out of shape when they get passed over.
I think what happens is that, sometimes, people are playing at different scales. No one wants to get one or two cool things to do, but some people think smaller victories in their areas of interest are cool enough, while other people aren't happy unless they save the world twice in a weekend. The same character who just shows up to give the real hero their sword can be the hero of their own story, it's just a matter of POV. You can have fun playing a regular beat cop in a world of superheroes, as long as the superheroes don't actually step in to catch every single criminal out there.
@thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:
Steam hosts a choose-the-response type game on how to psychologically seduce women.
You give them gifts and only take them along on quests where you can make choices that boost their approval, right?
How I typically stat characters: Well, I look at the descriptions of skills in the books, I look at example characters, and I try to figure out what would be reasonable for a character like mine to have. I will fudge this a point up or down, within reason, to bump up skills I feel would be useful, or in the case of CoD if I have to hit some prerequisites or something, but the keyword is within reason. I am not a newbie, this is just how I roll.
How I don't stat characters: Calculating the average expected outcomes for specific rolls given my stat and skill combinations and deciding I want a character who succeeds 70% of the time at shanking people in the ear. Because kill me now.
Sometimes I then realize everyone is way better at critical stuff than me and that STs are probably setting challenge levels in scenes based on that, so I very grudgingly start bumping up stuff I don't really feel like my character should have, and kinda hate it.
@derp said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):
Super major peeve -- your character doesn't get extra stats/immunity based on backstory. That also isn't the way this works, and we need to be realistic about that. People have crafted the most convoluted backstories ever to explain why they're immune / resistant / not afraid of X thing, but then rock like 4 dice in resistances on their sheet.
Those resistance stats are what should be determining how much of a badass this person is in their backstory. Not the other way around.
If the character does not get extra stats/immunity based on backstory, give me a sheet that is 20 pages long with enough detail for it to make sense. The backstory is the -5 modifier to your roll because you decided to shoot my character while blindfolded and swinging upside down from the chandelier. The majority of a character's personality and beliefs are not on their sheet because there is no place on the sheet to put them.
Where on my sheet does "this character was a complete asshole to mine and I hate them" go?
I guess I'd feel more at ease if my character sheet was 20 pages long and I had 20+ social fighting merits at my disposal.
Felicia can kill a man with a single pull of the trigger. Any man. Any time. Felicia can't just talk a faithful monk into joining an orgy for the glory of Satan, regardless of how amazing her eyes are (they change color) or her mastery of body language. Does she have a few months to plot his downfall, causing him to question his faith and everything he believed in? In that case... maybe.
Killing someone is a lot easier, as it should be.
Also, the vast majority of my character's personality and beliefs aren't on her sheet. They are inside my head. How does the system interact with that, if not by way of invoking player agency to some extent?
If my character gets shot, they get shot. If they are fed false information, then they are fooled. But if they get talked into doing something in a way that is incompatible with my understanding of how the character thinks and feels, that's a problem. I try to be flexible, I'll bend even for the sake of OOC convenience, but I can only bend so far. Past a certain point, if the character is doing things I can't make sense of, that contradict everything I envisioned them as being, I'm done. They're no longer my character and they're no longer playable. I also don't play rosters, so those are safe!
If you are trying to manipulate someone into sending your charity a few dollars a month, sure, you can try doing that in the timescale of a combat scene.
Typically, however, the timescale is entirely off. Some of these examples would not be a scene, they would require multiple scenes of getting to know someone, figuring out what makes them tick, how to make them like you, how to pressure them. You don't just talk your way into a social combat win, you actually get close to someone, you bribe and blackmail, etc.
Combat isn't super realistic, but people can suspend their disbelief and abstract it out to its outcome and still have buy-in from the players. Social and mental stuff just does not work the same. It's not just a matter of agency, it's also a matter of suspension of disbelief and player buy-in.
I feel like this game would be worth it for the Played-By pictures at the very least.
I dreamed I joined a game where staff assigned you a character from a roster based on the outcome of a personality test. All the characters were dogs.
I feel like this is somehow Arx-related.