Best posts made by Pyrephox

@surreality said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

@Pyrephox I think the suggested 'no go' zones are a good start (and they would need to be fairly broad, not loop-hole ridden specificity), but it does, absolutely, need pairing with staff with enough balls to curb stomp abusive players right out the door. Neither of these things are 'true to the system' as what was being described as a laudable ideal, though; in our environment, mods of some kind are necessary to make that system remotely viable. 'Being true to the system' should never be a higher goal than 'players not being abused'.

Well, yes. But again, that's an OOC issue, not an issue with the mechanics. Additionally, it allows for players to be abusive in the other direction, by gaming people's reluctance to enforce social mechanics in order to do frankly ridiculous things that damage other people's ability to enjoy the game. Like continuously harassing another character who has less physical/mystical power but more social power, and forcing them to take the consequences of your actions, while constantly ignoring their attempts to use their own form of power to just leave them alone. Which, by the rules, SHOULD work, but doesn't because "oh god you don't get to tell me how my character thinks/feels! If you don't like it, then throw a punch! Make me leave! C'mon, c'mon, c'mon! It's a non-consent game, if you don't like it, do something about it IC! ...except that. Because intimidation doesn't work on me! Or, no, it works, but when my character gets scared he becomes really aggressive so I'm warning you, if you do it, you'll be sorry because I've got 18 dice in brawl and 20 Defense (because I didn't have to spend any XP on social resistance)...."

I will say, though, that if you're going to fall on the side of "social dice don't work on PCs", then you either need to ensure that there is a powerful, NPC-controlled status system that allows for meaningful action and influence on the parts of the game that matter (and come down hard on any ST who does not allow the PCs to use their social skills in effective ways in interactions with NPCs), or you need to do away with those skills. It's frankly unfair to expect people to invest XP into skills and abilities that have no functional use on the game.

@Derp said in What do RPGs *never* handle in mu*'s? What *should* they handle?:

I know that we're getting into old hat territory here, but the Doors system already has rules for compromises built into it. If your character totally and just would absolutely never do a thing, but the other guy still won, then it's time to negotiate. Not necessarily time to get up in arms about it. If the negotiations seem to be going in bad faith, on either side, that's when it's time to call in staff.

That said, as far as certain topics being absolutely consent only -- they sort of are already, in a lot of systems, but not consenting to a specific thing doesn't necessarily mean you get to completely call the shots on how that scenario turns out, either. Again, why I like Doors -- compromises are built into the system, and both players have to negotiate something in good faith if one of them just really isn't feeling the scenario on the table. Neither player gets to dictate in absolute terms how it turns out, but they have to find an agreeable middleground, which is fairly easily done in most situations.

But i'm seriously kind of digging @Coin's suggestion of being able to spend willpower to lock doors for a scene. That's... a thing I might tinker with some.

I like that suggestion, too. And yeah, the Doors system is the best yet iteration of social skills mechanics for WoD/CoD. Especially when paired well with Conditions and Beats, it gives people a real, mechanical incentive to be willing to "fail" on occasion, and it builds a collaborative aspect into social maneuvering.

For what it's worth, CoD is better on the combat side, too, even though people (staff members too) don't use the coolest features such as purpose declaration and surrender/beaten down rules. It's absolutely designed to let people get their punch on without everything having to end in murder, as well as helping to frame the stakes of a conflict in more interesting ways than "try and kill each other".

CoD is riffing heavily on newer, stat-light systems that take player/GM cooperation and collaboration seriously, and I love where it's going. However (to bring this back to the topic of the thread), people aren't yet really thinking about how a CoD game needs to be run and set up differently than a WoD game. Just the investigation system alone suggests a massive sea change in how we think of "plots", and one that could take some of the burden off of STs, but neither STs nor Players are really running with that, yet, that I've seen.

@Arkandel said in Fallen World MUX!:

@Pyrephox said in Fallen World MUX!:

And about "whatever you'll enjoy" is just flat, flat wrong. Terribly wrong. I weep for the wrongness of it. It's one of the things that will flat out make me walk away from a game, because it says to me that staff has no idea what kind of game they're actually running, no coherent theme, and no interest in drawing new players into the game in interesting, fun ways.

I wanted to address that last part real quick. You missed out on the (theoretical but pretty frequently asked) question it was answering: "What's needed?". Since that sounds similar to what you're talking about in regards to roles. "Something you will enjoy playing, nevermind what's already on the grid right now" seems like a valid answer to me - it's not a complete one, but I wasn't going for that in my example.

No, I get it. I just think it's wrong. "Something you will enjoy playing," is not a useful answer. ANY character I create is going to be something I enjoy playing. I don't make a policy of playing characters I don't find fun. It's like me asking, "Hey, is it better to take a right turn or a left at this street to get to this address?" and someone answering, "You should really drive to that address." It is not an answer that in any way addresses my concern!

My feeling is that tasks are designed the wrong way around. Right now you do stuff to get resources. I wonder if it wouldn't work better and be more intuitive if you spent resources to do meaningful stuff.

I might, if I were redesigning it, do away with silver income for people above a certain social strata. Instead, they'd get an automatic salary of social, economic, and military resources each week based on the total resources of the house/organization that represents how much of that house's resources that they, on their own authority, can bring to bear. Tasks, then, would be meaningful activities that require resources to accomplish, and once accomplished, would have some significant effect. Default tasks for noble houses might be Land Improvement (improve econ resources of the house), Play the Game (improve social resources), Military Training (improve mil resources), Trade War (reduce economic resources of the target House/Organization), Character Assassination (reduce social resources of the target House), Sabotage (reduce military resources of the target House), plus a few tasks devoted to whatever phase the game is currently in - right now, for example, it might be Calm the Commons or Rouse the Commons (increase or decrease civil unrest in a House's territory) that could have consequences for specific houses or organizations. Task thresholds would be large enough that people would have to get other PCs to support their Tasks, but without the current restriction on 'cannot be of the primary organization as the task', so if all the Velenosas want to spend their resources on making their House bigger, better regarded, and militarily powerful, they can, although it reduces their ability to be able to wheel and deal in the short term with other Houses, which means others could form an alliance against their interests.

Characters could still exchange resources for silver, if they wanted, or trade resources directly to artisans/crafters (who would continue to get silver salaries, not resources) so that they can accomplish their tasks (which would have much smaller thresholds, since such PCs are usually working for themselves, not for a large organization) in exchange for shiny gewgaws. Throw in a few special tasks that can ONLY be accomplished through spending large amounts of silver cash (Establish New Trade Route, perhaps), just to change things up on people.

To me, it just makes more conceptual sense for people to have the income first, and be courted on how they should spend/invest that income, rather than having to run around trying to get support for some nebulous thing that, for some reason, gives you lots of resources. You could also add some fun intra-House stuff where the heads of houses can tweak the incomes of individual members, including putting that dissolute, useless second cousin on a silver income (so he can carouse and drink all he wants) but no resources (because no one wants him making decisions anyway).

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

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

Right now, there's not a lot of...coherence? Across mechanics, which means that you're learning a lot of completely unique and separate mechanical systems that nonetheless are using the same resources and stats, but not necessarily in the same or predictable ways.

I completely agree, actually. I'm profoundly unsatisfied with how disconnected the various systems are - they only have the most tenuous of connections with one another since each were just created to satisfy different requirements, and it's something I've spent quite a lot of time thinking about. The task system I'm very unhappy with currently (it only marginally fulfills some of the purposes it was created for, but is needlessly complicated and onerous, while completely failing to fulfill other roles envisioned for it), so I definitely want to change it significantly, but I don't think I have the luxury of doing that for some time, unfortunately.

I give you major kudos for being honest about that! And, really, I don't envy anyone the task of trying to build a game system while people are currently playing the game, especially with the numbers Arx is pulling at the moment, much less put in revisions.

"Not reading the damn book" is, in my experience, at least 70% of the problem in any discussion about social resolution mechanics.

@Arkandel I don't think it's fair to hold a game that was explicitly in alpha testing, where the staff outright said, "No real plot movement will take place because we're mostly testing systems and mechanics" to the same standards you'd hold a fully released game.

Now, that said, is it fair to try it out, realize you don't want to play a game in alpha, and bop away? Absolutely. No one is obligated to play a game that isn't for them, no matter what. And I feel like alpha should have a few more game resets myself, to let staff do some of the more significant changes that I, at least, still feel the mechanics need, without penalizing/benefiting characters unevenly.

Now that the game's in beta, though, I'd be hard-pressed to argue that nothing is happening and there is no plot. Now, for the most part, the events and things happening are fairly subtle, because a lot of people's secrets are things on the downlow that provide extra context and information. But those things aren't confined, as far as I can see, to particular social classes, backgrounds, or 'proximity to staff'. In fact, there are things spread /incredibly/ widely over the character base, so much so that I feel like more people are frustrated by "can't know/participate in it all" than "I have nothing to get involved with."

But I think a political/intrigue game does require some commitment to choosing a character who would be involved in the plot you want to see, and then seeking that out, both IC, and by communicating OOC with staff during character creation. Roster characters tend to be excellent in that regards (much to my surprise), but if you want to make a custom character, you'll probably have to be a much more proactive person. Not because you might not have an awesome secret, but because you have to make more of a 'place' for yourself. Especially if you ALSO want to be in a custom family, or no family at all (and not affiliated with any family, either). So, yeah, if you're the lone guy who just rolled, and chose no political or family ties to anyone else on the grid? You're gonna need to find a reason to make people care, and it might take a little while. People should meet you halfway, but not be expected to cross the whole field.

I'd like some intrigue events, honestly. Things where you can actively USE information to make changes in the world through the right word in the right ear, through stirring up (or calming down) the common masses, through creating the right sorts of deals that have measurable effects in the world. Diplomatic events, etc. Not tasks, but things that actually use skills.

But, full disclosure, that's totally because my character is sitting on a handful of social skills and stats that are largely useless with PCs, so it'd be nice to have something they're good for.

Other than that, my preference is always for small group things, where PCs have a chance to interact, grow, change, and make a measurable difference on the world in the bargain. A big war/battle type event would be fun, but it'd be really nice to see that be a multiscale thing, where the commanders are playing more of a chess game with living pieces, and the pieces are important PC squads who are either fighting battles, or sneaking behind enemy lines for scouting/espionage/assassination/etc, where they're very active but don't have any opportunity to see the big picture that the commanders have.

EDIT: If you go with something like the above, though, you'll need to spread the GMing out, because there's simply not enough of you guys to do something like this. I'd suggest staggered squads - the first wave, y'all run the squad-based plots as a model for what these should look like, etc. Make the first squads also be people who are willing to GM a squad after them, and use it as sort of a training field, then let those players GM for the next group of squads, with staff oversight and aid. Assess afterwards using logs/asking players what needs to be tweaked/clarified, etc, then move into the next with the improvements made. Since the game's in beta, this is a great time to do something that's explicitly test/training, since you can always roll it back if everything goes to Hell.

@Roz said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

@Derp said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

@Roz said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

@Sunny said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

@Kestrel said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

I happen to think that rape, sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, transphobia and the like make for great storytelling — this coming from someone frequently derided as a SJW — so I tend not to understand why anyone would want to exclude these themes from their story where they should realistically apply.

Some people do not enjoy having to same fight they have to fight in their everyday lives in their pretendy-fun-time games, don't enjoy exploring trauma that they have personally experienced. It's not really a hard concept to grasp even if you don't feel the same way. Empathy is awesome.

Yeah. I don't see why it's exactly hard to understand. People can like all different aspects of a historical time period that are unrelated to specific discriminations that also existed then.

But the point is, they exist whether they are pleasant or not. Pretends fun times doesn't necessarily take a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser to the fact that there are horrible things in the world. Any world.

No, they don't necessarily. But some people would indeed like to take a magic eraser to them in their hobby time. You don't have to be 100% historically accurate for fun to exist. Like, are you objecting to the purity of people's RP experience or something? People who bend settings are generally fully aware of those unpleasant things. They just maybe prefer making a space -- or playing in spaces -- without them.

It's worth noting that people also exist for whom these sorts of cultural restrictions and flaws provide an interesting set of constraints and conflicts to drive RP. Neither of these positions is a wrong one - and in fact, many people (like myself) fall in different places on the scale depending on what mood they're in and what the specific game is. Like, if I'm playing a game set ostensibly in the 1800s, then I want there to be acknowledgement of the mores of the time /even if those mores are not a major part of the gameplay and plot/. If I'm playing, say, a politically-oriented game, then I'm going to want those mores and customs and taboos to be a much larger part of the game, because those are many of the things that drive and complicate politics. On the other hand, if I'm playing a game where the premise is "we're cowpokes putting down a zombie apocalypse with our six-shooters" then I am not going to want racism or sexism to get involved in my pretendy fun times.

Like a lot of things with MU*s, it's not that any one position along the continuum is unreasonable, it's just that getting a group together who are on entirely different places on that line can be...complicated.

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

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

My interruptions have always been more ... severe.

People come in, and have a gun fight. Never try to engage the players there. Just interrupt.

The vast majority of people making really elaborate sets just want to be very evocative storytellers, and I'm really okay with that. But then there's guys who just want to dominate a scene, and it's because of them that I'm instinctively wary of anyone taking tremendous liberties in describing the environment in a set, and trying to force everyone to conform to it, which just doesn't work so great in non-sandboxes. Like I personally prefer people to avoid describing any of the context of the world around them except things that are completely unobjectionable and would fit the context of anyone just wandering in, if they are in a public space. It makes the organic rp a million times easier, and I think rp that's highly referential off of the environment changing is better off done in private when context is easily understood throughout the scene.

Man, that makes for some really bland scenes, though. It's one of the reason I often get burnt out and unhappy with public scenes - they tend to take place in this gray, featureless expanse where the weather is always meh, you're perpetually stuck in a grey sort of twilight so that no one has to remember if it's day or night, and you're surrounded by faceless nonentities of NPCs. Might as well just have a set of blank rooms, at that point.

@Arkandel The XP issue is actually one of the things that particularly concerns me, design-wise, moving forward. Especially since with the training thing, people who have more money can open an /even larger/ gap in progression between the haves and have nots. It's definitely a concern, I think. Especially since some of the things that SHOULD matter (conflict of interest, other duties) for those in high places don't really matter - a High Lord doesn't actually have any of their IC time taken up by their duties, so they're free to go out and smash things on the battlefield, hang out in the slums making friends with peasants, join the Faith, research all the magics, etc.

The new AP system might help a little with the 'be all the places, do all the things' issue, but the XP is still a problem.

Meanwhile, the "I'm too cool for school" crap is ALWAYS an issue, and it's really annoying. I'm not keen on people who have their characters have hysterics or breakdowns and disrupt plots, but damn, wo/man, show some human emotions. I remember being in one plot where the GM was posing some really great, spooky as hell stuff, and I was enjoying my character having some significant reactions to that...but the other character was just like, "Eh." And then I felt silly.

@DeadEmpire I think you're referring to stat costs, and it's a base cost of 100, not 1000.

That said, the XP situation is crazy. I mean, that's been known (and mentioned, even in this thread, I think) for months. Some people regularly get 30/40+ XP a week, and maximize it with use of the very generous teaching system, and I know several characters with 5+ skills at 5 (the highest you can go without being actively supernatural in ability) and 3+ stats at 5.

It's always been my position that the game badly, badly needs an XP wipe before moving out of 'beta', and a retooling of XP costs, now that there is a solid idea of how much XP can be acquired weekly. And a few more XP sinks added, or a way to 'cash in' XP for other resources.

@sparks said in General Video Game Thread:

@kanye-qwest said in General Video Game Thread:

@tempest said in General Video Game Thread:

I really enjoyed Inquisition, aside from all of the characters being god awful trash heaps (except Cassandra and the Iron Bull guy).

DEEP BREATH um wow you take that back Varric Tethras is the best Dragon Age companion ever, even if he did get sad between 2 and Inquisition, he is still my fake platonic true love. (also cassandra and iron bull are gr8)

sits here in the "I kind of like Solas, even though he's a lying jackass" corner

It is very hard for me not to romance him every single time I play Inquisition, just because I know how it is going to end, and the conga-line of trauma and betrayal a Solasmancing elf character experiences from the 3/4ths point to the end of the game is just...melodramatic catnip. Also, well intentioned extremists who end up betraying you for A Cause are kinda my fictional type (yes, I romanced Anders, and then stabbed him).

My team collects data for a federal project with firm deadlines and significant financial penalties associated with not staying within the boundaries. We're contracted by the client who will actually get hit with the penalties - we collect the data, create the final files, send them in to their person so that the person can upload them to the federal portal.

First of the month, we sent in our part. The deadline is today. Enter 4:00PM, and the client has only now looked to find the file. Mind you, there's always a data error or two, and the file usually bounces once or twice for Reasons, needs to be corrected, and resubmitted. This is not the first time we've done this; we do it every six months on average.

Every single time, this goes down to the wire when it doesn't need to. And it's not our fault, but that will never stop the client from panicking at us about it.

Holy shit. Hooray!

@killer-klown I found it often did, honestly. Most of your sex-creepers aren't looking for /work/, or for people who actually know the social rules - usually just saying, "Sure, if you want to seduce my character, it looks like the rules on pg. XX of the core rulebook would apply," would be enough to scare them away. And if it didn't, pretty much no one ever persisted after I said, "Oh, and it'll be fade to black."

@magee101 Honestly, I just use the console cheat and give myself a combat skill at a ridiculous level, and just never use it except for the stuff where no social solution exists. Life's too short for those sewers.

I spent a few weeks looking at homonuculus videos on YouTube. As in, people who are attempting to or claim to have created an alchemical homonuculus in real life. Using the 'traditional' methods, and variations thereof. I.e. injecting their sperm and/or blood into a chicken egg and trying to hatch it.

The hoax videos range from hilarious to 'surprisingly good production values for something that is completely ridiculous', but I think I found the earnest ones more fascinating. Like, people who had hours and hours of videos of meticulous experiments on whether any combination of treatments or circumstances could make a human-sperm-injected chicken egg hatch into an alchemical creature. (Spoiler: It can't.) And the failure of each experiment is cataloged and discussed, and refinements proposed, carried out, and dissected.

SO MUCH EFFORT invested into something that is just absolutely impossible AND has a physical outcome expected. (Unlike the various magic videos, where no one can really argue with spiritual results, I mean. These poor guys just crack every one of these eggs, and see that they are, indeed, still unfertilized chicken eggs, or rotten chicken eggs, and then just...do it again. And again.)

I would love, love love to update it to 2.0. In fact, I'm finding it hard to get back into a 1.0 game, even with a character I quite enjoyed. Just relearning all the rules and going, "But, wait, this made much more sense in CoD..." makes me kind of sad. So, you might lose some people, but you might attract others.

@ganymede said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

@tragedyjones said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

Also at least in Requiem 2E you can attempt to resist the blood bond. But you will probably fail and/or end up a vitae addict.

That's fine, but in Requiem 2E the blood bond is also represented as a substantial penalty to resist your domitor's whims, and not a fiat to do as he/she says.

Keeping in mind that the penalties to resist are more dice than the average mortal even has to roll, of course.