Best posts made by Pyrephox

@Kanye-Qwest That seems like a bit of an excessive and unwarranted response, you know.

And it's not just pedantics, either. It's important for a roleplaying setting (yes, even a fantasy setting set in a non-Earth world) to have some sense of cultural realism and weight to it, not just to unrustle people's jimmies, but also to facilitate actually playing in that world. And the more arbitrary unrealities that you set in a world, the less possible it is for people to play in that world, at least without trying to wrap their mind around some fundamentally alien viewpoints. And no, cultural unrealities aren't the same thing as fantastical unrealities - it's a lot easier to accept a world like the world we know, but with magic, than it is to accept a world like the world we know, that somehow lacks, say, marriage as a societal construct. The latter is going to cause /even people who like and want your game to succeed/ to recoil a bit, especially if the premise is "this world is a lot like the world you know, except that no one has ever thought about getting married or spending their lives with just one person in a faithful romantic/domestic relationship".

It's one of the reasons that I don't play Pern games, and often recoiled from Pern as a setting, even if some elements were cool. Dragons? Fine. Time travel and teleportation? Cool. A setting filled with humans without any sort of /religion/? That's just bizarre. And I say that as an atheist. (And yes, there are other bizarre and ill-thought-out bits of that setting, that's just the one that gets me /every time I think about it/, because it flies in the face of what we know about human beings in a weird and gratuitous sort of way.) At the same time, McCaffery's other works, which have just as little religiosity in them, for the most part, but take place in universes where religion exists but is just never talked about or factors into plots or personalities of protagonists? Don't bother me as much. Because the idea is not so much "I want to play a super religious PC and have all my characterization revolve around religion" as it is, "I want to know that human beings in this setting work in approximately the same ways as they work in real life, so that I can play my character appropriate and interact with other characters in appropriate and genuine ways".

Although, for that matter, just admitting that something is arbitrary, and not having a meltdown every time someone points out that it's weird and arbitrary is fine, too. I've run evil campaigns where I've said up front, "Yes, you're playing evil. It's going to be four-color evil, with grand schemes, betrayals, and Taking Over the World, not war crimes and torture, even if your character is written as to not have any problems with those. We're just not going to do it." And then all you have to do whenever it comes up is, "Yep, it's a bit weird, but it facilitates the game we want to play." And say nothing more about it. Because that at least acknowledges the unreality of it - and, as an aside, established the GM as an adult who knows it's unrealistic and is totally okay with that being pointed out, but is just setting parameters for the game, not feeling the urge to start temper tantruming at people for being bewildered.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said:

@Pyrephox said:

Too often, we want to build Big Plots like they would be built in conventional media, which doesn't work, because you've got 25-30 players involved instead of five or six.

While that's certainly part of the impulse to build big plots, there are also cultural pressures that are maybe a bigger driver of it. Part of it is also a feeling that a plot needs to be "fair." I put "fair" in quotes because, if you're constantly scraping to be give everyone a little bit of everything, you end up giving nobody anything meaningful. But that's often perceived as preferable to focusing a plot on a manageable group of PCs.

Which is why I might suggest a shift in how we look at big plots. Don't have the Big Climax that people are used to, but rather distribute the plot such that a lot of people can meaningfully contribute. Like, let's say you have the Army of Bodysnatchers big plot. You give the AoB a...let's steal from Mass Effect and call it a War Score - a number that reflects how much the city has done to beat back the bodysnatchers. The GMs have an idea of how much Score is needed - let's say 50. And they create a whole bunch of mini-plots, each with its own score rating - from a one-person plot for a doctor PC who has the opportunity to cure a friend who's in the first stage of bodysnatcher infection, up to something for five or six players that's infiltrating a bodysnatcher nest and poisoning the grub stashes. As PCs succeed at plots, the War Score goes up - when they fail, it goes down and some other Complication happens (spawning new mini-plots to clear up the mess created). As the War Score gets closer to meeting the limit, the plots reflect a dwindling but desperate enemy population (stakes rise in each plot, while resolutions more clearly eliminate leaders of the army or major resources they have). When the War Score limit is reached, the plot concludes.

@Tempest I'd agree with that, and furthermore say that political games need more stringent XP caps that more adventure/physical conflict based games. One of the fundamental points of a political game is that no one can go it alone, AND that no one can get everything that they want. People need to feel vulnerable, hungry, and need to know that they can't cover all their bases alone, so that they reach out to others. As soon as people feel secure, the game stagnates, because they no longer feel the need to make deals or take risks.

@Arkandel said in Course Corrections:

Sometimes people are just unable to form abstractions in the context of games. That doesn't mean all abstractions are necessary or even beneficial, just that some are.

There was a guy on Arx who insisted on figuring out if cement was invented in that world. How were they making the kinds of buildings they were without it? How?

But that's not a very interesting question to answer. And each time one is answered someone will push for more ("so if I have that, can I create asphalt? I can, right? Then we can have better roads! Then if we can harvest the power of steam we can have an industrial revolution!").

Just let it be, dammit.

I am sometimes in danger of becoming this. I try very hard not to, but it frustrates me on a deep level if I can't predict in some regard how the world works and what options are available. Like, to me, whether a world has a knowledge of germ theory is /fascinating/, especially if it actually takes the idea that it doesn't, but it does have Some Sort of Magical Healing and run with it. I don't need people to die of infected wounds willy and nilly, but if there is no germ theory, don't refer to disinfecting things! Chase away the fever spirits by getting them drunk on strong alcohol, or point out that in this world, surgeons CAN go bloody-handed from one patient to the next, because they're really laying on hands, not practicing modern medicine.

But I'm a setting geek.

Updated, after quite a while, to include current characters.

It won't be unique if a few more really good games are out there! And I think that would be a good thing - each game will be shaped by its staff and playerbase to be something different, and provide a different experience. It'd probably be best for both Arx AND other games in the same niche if people had different places to go, so that they didn't try to shoehorn every possible experience/playtime into one game.

Michelle West has an ongoing, endless series of epic fantasy that starts with a duology (Hunter's Oath/Hunter's Death) and hasn't really...ended. Despite the the fact that every single one of the now...12? 13? books is a doorstopper. It's a hugely intricate world where the great and epic magics are starting to awaken again as an exiled god tries to return to the world. I love it beyond reason, even though Sagara can't finish a plot thread to save her life.

She has a slightly less intricate second-world urban fantasy series under her other writing name of Michelle Sagara which has the same flaws, but I still love equally well.

I love iconic, flavorful locations that include their own hooks - as long as these are actually used and supported by staff. Give me slums with tragic histories and mysteries attached, or creepy Stepford suburbs, or haunted forests with their own bodycounts. I love any location where I can look at the desc and say, "Oh, yes, I know what I want to play here."

@TNP said in General Video Game Thread:

Anyone play Disco Elysium yet? Does it live up to the reviews it's been getting?

I loved it. Absolutely loved.

It's not for everyone. Things you should know before going in:

• It's incredibly text-heavy. There is no combat system. You mostly walk around, click on things, read dialogue, choose responses.
• It's unabashedly political, but it doesn't offer any easy answers, other than a general 'racist idiots are racist idiots'. But your favorite political system, whatever it is, will probably be thoroughly mocked at some point, including choosing not to have a favorite political system.
• It's weird. Some people compare it to Lynch, and it certainly can be very Lynchian. But it's the sort of game where random things can go weird and sideways pretty fast, especially if you pick the right skills.
• It's pretty short. A fairly thorough single playthrough is probably 20ish hours. It has some replayability, but there are no branching plotlines. Just different takes on the situation based on who your character is this time around.

1.4967 and so forth into numbers unregarded.

@Tat said in What locations do you want to RP in?:

@Pyrephox said in What locations do you want to RP in?:

I'd love it if room descs and locations in a WoD game really brought in that kind of stuff. Pointed out the places where the police just will not arrive. Made mention of suicide rock in the park, where every year on the longest night, someone kills themselves, and somehow, the police are never in time to stop it or able to keep it from happening. The other 364 days of the year, of course, it's a LOVELY place. Here's Compton's Vegan Delites, and it's got great selections; let's just not talk about the fact that the last restaurant in this spot closed down because the proprietor was found adulterating the hamburgers with bits of his missing wife. But the fried tofu is fantastic.

These are my favorite kinds of room descs. They don't just tell you what's there, they give you suggestions to fuel your RP. And sometimes they turn into plots.

Yeah! To me, the absolute best location desc is one that as soon as I read it, I have a scene idea that's uniquely suited to THIS place, and isn't just another generic scene in Anywhere, USA. Back when I desced a grid for a game that never got off the ground, I tried to make each location distinct and meaningful like that, including brief mentions of mysteries, plot hooks, and police response times or atmosphere.

@Carma Thank you for sharing! I'm not necessarily sure I see the need - especially if that list is as granular and extensive as that snippet implies. I think it could be very, very easy to accidentally trip over someone's horrific aversion to, I dunno, severe weather even when you've tried to make sure they're fine with body horror, or bad language, or whatever would seem higher on the threat spectrum, but I appreciate what you're trying to do.

I suspect what will actually happen, though, is that people just ask OOC "hey, I'm thinking of a scene that incorporates X, Y, and Z. Any of that on your do not fly list" or something. Typically speaking, if you make a technology that makes things /harder/ for people, then they'll work around it.

@devrex said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

@faraday Well yeah, I never said it was an inherently terrible idea. I'm having trouble understanding how it might create a better experience or how you would avoid another player completely jumping the shark with a character or even the entire story, but I mean, I'm very "You do you and have fun" by nature. If by design you absolutely don't want anyone ever keeping control of a character then yeah, 24 hours is the right call.

I think it could give a fun 'writer's room' sort of experience. You could actually work with people to set up very dramatic arcs involving different groups of characters, and work out things so that everyone could play their 'favorite bits' of those arcs - love the hurt, hate the comfort? Play a character while they're getting whumped, pass it on to someone who likes the comfort afterwards. Some things stress you out, but you'd like to see the character in the aftermath of them? Hand the character over to someone who enjoys that sort of thing, then get the experience of the aftermath.

I can see it working. I think, again, that it'd be a niche appeal, and it would be a very different experience than the 'one player one character' RPG experience that we're more accustomed to in this corner of the hobby. But it'd be interesting.

Sort of participating. I've got a little over 10K in a novel I'm working on now, and I'll go ahead and see if I can't finish that this month, but I'm not going to stress over it.

I like plots to be fast, with lots of action (not necessarily physical action, but I do like brisk progression to certain milestones, even if there might be pauses between milestones), but I like relationships to be slow.

It definitely happens, and it can be a real problem, if your theme is important to the game you want to run/play. Or even if it isn't - I think a lot of tension on WoD games can come from the fact that the theme of each game is pretty much "pick from this wide variety of possibilities" in the books, with the expectation that the GM will narrow down what KIND of WoD game it's going to be - and then MU* staff don't do that, which means everyone wants to play the WoD game that's in their head, and some of those games are largely incompatible with each other.

As to why? Mostly just that. Everyone has something that really revs their engine, and barring strong guidance from a GM, a lot of players will want to bring that into every game they play. And people want to play the popular games, so they have an incentive to not self-select out of an incompatible thematic desire, but rather to twist the theme around to their preferred play style.

@ominous said in Roster Characters & WoD?:

@ganymede

I think they meant my idea of perma-rostering all or most characters.

Amusingly enough, I remember when HorrorMU 1.0 first came up, one of the things I heard from a number of players in my circle at the time was disdain for the idea of 'Seasons' - how could anyone say that their PC's story would be 'up' in just a couple of months? How could anyone keep up with the pace? Why would you even DO something so weird as to have an anthology-type game, when most players clearly wanted to have one character that they played continuously from the start to the finish of that character's story, sometimes years?

And yet, now both The Network and HorrorMU* 2.0 are doing pretty well with exactly that format, with a few revisions. And it CAN BE hard to give up a character at the end of these Seasons or miniseries. But it also lets you take risks and push boundaries that people largely did not take or push when the loss of a character meant that a character was just gone in the ether forever. Neither game is for All Players, but they find enough people interested to do well, so far.

Experimentation is always good, in games. If it doesn't work, the worst you lose is a bit of time. And sometimes you discover something that works well for a good number of people.

Woke up today to a tire low pressure light and remembered that I'd hit the hell out of a pothole last night. Oh, and sometime during the night my heater turned on and /never turned off/. Even when I attempted to turn off the unit itself.

Hello Monday, how you doin'?

@faraday And your character can /try/ to be a cool dude in the face of intimidation, but if he fails, it's just bad playing to refuse to play the failure honestly.

Personally, I think the 'agency' argument is always a little disingenuous. If you have a character in a system that has rules about social interactions, then by making that character, you've agreed to play by those rules. You have made a character knowing those rules existed, and have chosen to play a character knowing how conflicts are resolved.

Deciding that a subset of those rules shouldn't apply to you because you don't like how it plays out in this situation is every bit as mature as a guy who flips the chessboard when he starts to lose, no matter what kind of 'but my creativity!' artiste arguments it gets dressed up in.

Okay, the Chef element really intrigues me, because I think it could add a real meaty component, especially for Seedless. Basically, stealing from several niche anime:

Ingredient Hunters. Maybe there are rare, dangerous ingredients out there which have boosting/altering effects on how the Sacred Fruit is metabolized in a Seeded's body - like, Fruit broth made with the heart of a newborn firedrake allows fire Seeded to cast at a reduced mana cost until it's been digested (say, 24-48 hours), and if you can add some of the milk from a wild windchaser, a flying mammal found only at the tops of the highest canopies to make that into a rich soup, you get reduced mana costs AND your flames are resistant to wind magic. Or something like that.

Someone has to gather these ingredients, and the nobles sure aren't going to do it (note: you'll have to /enforce/ this with theme and mechanics, or else the nobles are gonna want to be mages AND chefs AND ingredient hunters), so it falls to those scrappy, hungry, fearless sorts who go out into the godawful wilderness, risk getting horribly murdered, and drag back delicacies for the meals of the nobles, selling them for enough to make comfortable livings - as long as they don't get injured or killed in the process.

If you go off of it that way, then you can have three main entry points for 'roles in the game': Nobility, with a focus on magical adventure and intrigue and politics. Chefs, with a focus on intrigue (you can't tell me that rivals don't want to poison each other's food, or sub out high quality for fake Fruit to cripple each other), and crafting (I suggest a robust 'recipe' system that allows Chefs to really get creative with food and that rewards investment in multiple skills - like, maybe instead of just a 'cooking' skill, have several skills and/or special techniques that Chefs can purchase). And Ingredient Hunters, with a focus on wilderness adventure, combat, and weird skills like being able to use /everything/ from a beast - these guys, ideally, would be a little like Monster Hunters from the games, and swagger into town wearing bizarre equipment created from skins, horns, and teeth of their kills, dragging the broken down corpses of nightmare beasts for the market. More, two of those paths would greatly favor Seedless characters over Seeded, which should balance out the inherent I HAVE MAGIC awesomeness of being Seeded.

Especially if you're strict about NOT letting the Seeded go in and take over the Chef academies, or become the best Ingredient Hunters. Maybe those low status Seeded can dabble in one or both of those careers, but it should cost them.