Best posts made by Pyrephox

@icanbeyourmuse said in Thundergulch:

@greenflashlight I think it was a joke about the fact Thundergultch isn't doing the women in the 'women roles' and 'men in the men roles' from a historical point of view.

Or, rather, acknowledging that a 'historical point of view' doesn't actually mean "women had no agency and could only be helpless accessories to men", especially in that particular time and place.

Which is delightful and refreshing. Most people who demand that women be in a "historically accurate place" don't know their history very well.

@Ominous said in Eliminating social stats:

@Pyrephox uses Wall of Text. It is super-effective.

I worry about how much GM intervention some of the ideas would need. Also, as pointed out, it doesn't address immediate scene issues that require fast resolution, like bluffing a guard.

Yeah, I'm wordy.

Really, there's no way to have a strong political game without either a fuckton of mechanization to track favors/territory/resources/actions/resolutions, or a fuckton of GM intervention, or a slightly smaller fuckton of both.

The very essence of politics is that it's a couple dozen moving wheels interacting all at once, and everything is changing and everything important needs to be tracked so that opportunities can be exploited. You can simplify it down to bare-bones, but then, yeah, you're back to "roll and resolve", and all the whining that comes with it. If you want to protect character agency AND make social skills relevant and useful, then you have to have more of an infrastructure and more oversight than you do for combat.

@Lithium said:

@Pyrephox I know the appeal for the game I am building right now will be limited, but you know what? I'm still gonna build it and just hope that others enjoy it as much as I hope to.

Good! More people should do that - honestly, I'd rather see a bunch of smaller, healthy, and unique games than a few large games that try to appeal to everyone ever.

@arkandel said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

@pyrephox said in How should IC discrimination be handled?:

In general, I'm more comfortable with playing fantasy prejudices than real world ones.

That's the key though. No one will get triggered because your PC says all shavs need to be driven out of the land, because none of us is a shav iRL (... I think). It's only a controversial matter at all because some people who've come out, or who have faced actual racism, or who've been mistreated based on their gender might not want to encounter it.

Fantasy (and sci-fi) racism is pretty safe in comparison, but not all settings get to use those tropes.

This is true! And, honestly, in the case of real-world-ish settings, I tend to downplay discrimination /unless the purpose of the game is to engage with it/. Like, I wrote up a campaign setting for steampunk Call of Cthulhu at one time, where nationalism, colonialism, and classism were key themes, with the characters meant to be on the receiving end of a lot of that. But, of course, it was a horror game, and tabletop. I don't know that I'd ever encourage real-world prejudices and discrimination in a "real world" setting in a MU*. Not unless, again, the PCs were on the receiving end of it, and intended to fight back or defy it.

That said, if I did play a historical game, as a /player/ I'd want to see that reflected at least in the setting, if not in the PCs, or I want it explicitly excised from the setting. Like a file that says, "Yes, we know the actual Jazz Age was filled with racism, sexism, etc. For the purposes of this game, none of that should be assumed to be a factor in the daily life of PCs." That doesn't make a lot of strict, IC sense, but it's a sacrifice made so that more people can have fun. And since it's a game, that's the point.

@fortydeuce SCORE! does victory dance

I would love an original theme SF game. Neither Star Wars or Star Trek thrill me as a game theme, to be honest, but I love SF.

I don't think 'more choices' pulls people apart, though. In fact, I think it offers the opportunity for a breakout success. Most new MU*s will fail. But that's normal for most new /everything/, and it doesn't hurt anyone to have twenty five games that only sustain 2-5 people. They're not hurting anyone, and if they chose this game above the other options, there's probably a reason for it. When that game closes, they may very well not move on to another game, but rather just drift away entirely.

@tempest I'll have to agree with this. It's just a matter of knowing players, and recognizing that there's a pretty significant minority of players for whom system mastery is a part of the game that really excites them. When you obfuscate the details from these players, you don't discourage them, you instead turn their focus with laser-like intensity towards working out the numbers, and they will use every resource at their disposal in order to know them. Not because they're evil or want to break your game, or anything - just because system mastery is part of the fun for them, and puzzles are inherently attractive to people.

@three-eyed-crow Honestly? Some people are just unreasonable. Luckily, they're fairly easy to identify - such as when they express distress at other people playing a game, and their opinions can (and should) be soundly ignored, and not used to calibrate any expectations.

As for starring - hmm. I would say that if you are a key player at a climax of a plot, such as using, creating, destroying a McGuffin, or leading a major magical or physical assault against a big bad, or you are the lead negotiator in a diplomatic crisis, things like that 'lead role'. If people can legitimately look around and say, "Hey, this would not have happened if not for X", then you were probably a lead.

And note that my suggestion doesn't involve 'taking away' the lead from anyone - some people are always going to be more proactive than others, and it can hurt to have a great idea for your character to do something and get told, "Hey, we'd actually like to give this to other people, so don't do that thing/don't try to get involved."

But do notice the people who don't ever seem to be the lead, and approach them, quietly, to see if there's anything they'd LIKE to do with their character that they aren't getting the chance to do. Some people, again, are perfectly happy never having the spotlight on them. Some people just don't want to talk to staff, for whatever reason. But people like to talk about their characters, and what they'd like to do with their characters, and I think reaching out about that would translate into a feeling of more joy, and might even lead to some really interesting plot ideas/directions that wouldn't happen otherwise.

Spotlight doesn't have to be a zero-sum game, even when it utilizes a limited resource (GM time).

@kay said in Let's talk about TS.:

@ganymede said in Let's talk about TS.:

@theonceler

Jake the One-Eyed Trouser Snake.
The Flesh Spear of Destiny.
Russell the Milk-Spitting Muscle.
Misplaced Baby Fist.
Squirtle.

I can keep going, I guess.

I feel you should! Extra points if it could also be the name for a D&D weapon or artifact.

Rod of Monstrous Size?

@Jeshin said:

I'd have to agree with the concept that all players are STs. No one if going to cry foul if you have a fly land in your soup and you make a scene about it with a vnpc waiter as a way to liven up a boring bar scene. Just like people probably won't cry foul if you have an NPC bump into you on the street and get into a shoving fight.

When in doubt and you want to spice up a dull scene. Just have bad things happen to your own character to be the catalyst for interaction.

Sadly, yes, some will. Or, and this has been my experience, escalate /insanely/. Like, "pose random NPC on public street being kinda a dick, so Other PC pulls out every supernatural power they have to curbstomp NPC into the pavement for no goddamned reason". Or one random scene where I had my PC in a bookstore, asking about a random book. NPC said, "Sorry, dude, already sold," so the other PC decides to try and turn it into a graphic torture scene to figure out where the book went.

Although the biggest reason why I've become wary of being the Active Person in the scene is because, unfortunately, then people come to expect it, rather than being inspired to reciprocate. I /like/ to run things, to get things moving, to pose fun little world-bits...but when it becomes the expected thing that I Will Entertain You, it's no longer fun. That's not what I'm here for. And worse, because I always sideline my PC when having those things things happen, I don't even really get to play my character.

@Jeshin said:

Specifically on getting players to engage as a staffer...

• Consider having an NPC provide them with a reason or the knowledge to become involved. Do they not know that a heist is going down and they're the best lockpicker in the city? Give them some kind of tie-in.

• Consider a rumor system (automated or freeform) that allows for general information to be distributed that has varying degrees of accuracy thus encouraging players to dig into them if their interest is piqued or use that information to find their own tie-in with the plot that is going on.

• Have the illusion of fortune or misfortune bring a player into a plot that is relevant to their personal story for the enrichment of themselves and the story you wanted them to be involved in.

Some of these have varying levels of babysitting going on, but if you're having issues on a playerbase wide scale then a little tender love and care from staff can go a long way to making them feel confident enough to begin finding their own stories.

Also, a big thing: roll with what the player does. Look. It doesn't matter if you hadn't thought about the kidnapping being witnessed before a PC says, "Hey, I'd like to hit the streets and ask around to see if anyone saw anything." Don't shut that down just because it wasn't the way YOU thought the information would be found. No, not even if the kidnappers had supernatural powers. Respond to the player's efforts to engage with the plot - don't make the player work too hard for plot-required information, or they'll throw up their hands and move on to something that's actually fun.

@ganymede It does not! And some people are always going to view /any possible loss/ for their character as a dire attack on their identity as a person. I've GMed for those players, who were lovely people, but just...not capable of viewing otherwise.

However, policy does effect how prevalent and supported a viewpoint is as well as what kind of players are attracted to your game - if you support a policy of, "We don't care if someone sexually harasses other players or sends them repeated graphic rape threats IC," then you're going to get a much higher percentage of players who are totally cool with sending other players graphic rape threats IC and sexually harassing others. Likewise, if your policy is, "IC social contests are contests between players," then you're going to get a higher percentage of players who have poor separation of IC/OOC to start out with. And a higher percentage of people who THINK they are far more seductive/charismatic/clever than they are, and who are not going to deal well with finding out otherwise.

You're also going to dissuade people who are uncomfortable with that sort of boundary crossing, and who prefer to be able to recognize that a character and a player can be good a very different things, without it being a judgement on the player. Now, if that's the playerbase you're looking for, that's fine - it's a good way to get it. If it isn't, then that's something to keep in mind.

@faraday I don't know - to me, that says that both of these players will be happier and more comfortable if the particular kind of relationship that their characters are in ends. Neither is wrong, and some people really do enjoy high-drama in their RP relationships, in which case Emotional Wreck PC might be a great fit. Some people really /don't/.

The issue in the above is only if either player somehow views "not continuing in this particular sort of RP relationship" as an OOC punishment or something, and thus refuses to either compromise OR let go.

I'm not sure that AP, even AP trading, is the problem - or, at least, it may only be a problem because of an overarching other issue: Lack of scarcity.

Silver and resources are effectively unlimited resources, really gated only by skills (which can fairly easily be pumped through activity + rs-hunting + teaching), and when they're acquired, can be turned into sort of an escalating feedback loop pretty easily - you can't trade AP right now, but you can still hire a haggler, or tap a protege, or buy raw resources/silver from someone who has nothing better to do with their time than generate it.

But that silver and those resources don't come from anywhere. Acquiring them has no opportunity cost or consequences, and they don't really represent anything real in the world. "Economic resources" don't reflect the wealth of a land that can be drained, they don't represent contracts with craftspeople who can be fully booked, even when it would make sense. Same for military (where do those new soldiers COME from? What isn't getting done on your lands because you decided to turn a thousand peasants into soldiers?), and even moreso for social. I think that feeds the playerbase's inclination to see acquiring these things as just a matter of "running code" rather than as IC actions that reflect things their characters are doing offscreen, things that matter.

And I think that sort of plays into a lot of the other issues - prestige balloons because people have effectively infinite resources to plug into chasing prestige. Investigations can be pushed along quickly, burning through clues, because dumping 50 resources every week isn't really that big of a deal, especially if you have two or three people helping you out. There's not a lot distinguishing non-leader nobles and commoners because there's no tension between them - and no pressing need to expand one's lands to grow, so no reason to not be friendly, diplomatic, and cooperative (which also contributes to resource/wealth/prestige bloat, because you only have to think about defending yourself from NPCs and not from hungry, hungry neighbors).

I remember, early in beta, staff talked about wanting to make sure that the wealth reflected in the world came from somewhere, that it could eventually be traced through the whole cycle. I feel like, in some ways, that's become a larger challenge as the game has expanded - in the rush to ensure that everyone has something to do, the coupling of 'thing to do' and 'what this means in the world' has been strained.

Unfortunately, the solution that comes to my mind would be a near total rework, and everyone would hate it. So I'm not sure what a GOOD solution would be, but I think it kinda has to start with looking at 'how much wealth, in silver AND resources does the Compact actually have and where is it', and reset things to reflect that, with systems that allow slow, risk-having growth (like conquering Abandoned territories (or your neighbors)), but fewer that just create silver/resources/materials out of whole cloth.

@kanye-qwest Eh. I gamed for years with a group of engineers. I'm very used to people showing up at the table with five pages of probability distributions before they'll make a decision on how to spend a point of XP. Some people are really, REALLY into that level of optimization. Which is fine - a good system provides just enough of a reward for optimization to make people feel good about putting in the effort, but not enough to make it mandatory that characters have to be built THIS WAY to be effective, or to allow the optimizer to blow the probability curve out of the water (see CoD/WoD's notoriously bad balancing issues).

@kanye-qwest There's an argument to be made for it. Ultimately, whatever changes you make to the system right now are only going to apply to how the system works /right now/, and how the system works with characters who have been built and benefited from years of working under different versions of the system. All of that seriously skews "how the system works" even in the moment, because everyone isn't really playing by the same rules. But more, every time you add a new system, /everything/ is going to be thrown off to some extent within the playerbase, and people are going to throw characterization to the wind as they scramble to adjust their mechanical abilities to take advantage of the new shiny. That's just gonna be a thing, and the only way to stop that from being a thing would be regular XP/asset resets with each rollout, so that you could actually test how the system works.

My biggest fear with this rolling implementation is that changes keep being made based on edge cases largely created by people having gobs and gobs of XP to build a character /perfectly/ designed to take advantage of the system, which often ends up hurting everyone who isn't that character. Which you have been taking into account by boosting some low-level work of various systems! But then, that leaves people in the middle, who the helpfiles say have "professional" level skills somewhat in a lull space.

But, talking about one specific thing: making hosting events more rewarding. I think the only real way to do that is to make hosting events more impactful. Adding prestige (even more prestige) to orgs and people who host events might help, but prestige should not, I think, be an ur-stat in the way it's sort of becoming (which is, to my mind, the issue with it, not just that there are numbers and they go up).

What I might suggest are a couple of different things: Fame gained for an event is a fraction of the fame of the people who attend that event, maybe averaged out, calculated at a random point during the event?. This lets social-climbing PCs know who they need to flatter, schmooze, and invite to get big boosts, AND it gives Famous PCs a chance to use that fifteen minutes of Fame to be courted and maybe win concessions or bonuses for being willing to show up. It's also very immersive and thematic -- IC Fame means that people want to be seen with you, and certain events will have greater cachet because they're attended by luminaries. It also allows people who don't want to have HUGE events throw high end, invitational events and still see benefits for doing so.

Second, throwing an event on behalf of an organization creates an automatic rise (maybe based on largesse and your Propaganda) in your reputation with that organization. Probably Affection rather than Respect, but maybe significant Affection and lower amount of Respect, because you ARE showing your support in a public fashion and taking on expense to do so, in favor of that org. Now - right this second, this doesn't mean much, because Respect and Affection don't do anything, but I assume you guys have systems in the works that will make those stats meaningful! This will position social mavens to be able to have a way to offset losses through actions, or promote themselves to orgs.

Third, allow social events to contribute towards influencing the social atmosphere of the world in a reliable, repeatable way. If a social character wants to, for example, make the defense of thralldom her passion, then she shouldn't have to just persuade PCs, but should be able to throw events that create a sway in the NPC population towards accepting thralldom as an ancient tradition which civilizes shavs and gives criminals a chance to make restitution for their crimes. And while someone could do that right now, by using the @action command, they'd have no idea how effective they would be, how many additional resources might be made, or where the NPC population is regarding thralldom and thus, how much pushing it's likely to need. If you could throw an event, put in your largesse, choose a Social Issue Of The Time (maybe predefined, maybe keyworded) and have it roll something for you and say, "This event will create a SMALL/MODERATE/SIGNIFICANT/LARGE support for thralldom in the NPC members of (Insert Ward Here)." then that's attractive, because you KNOW your character will have something of an effect. It also gives people a way to support causes they're passionate about OTHER than gathering silver and resources.

@SG said in GMs: Typical Player/GM Bad Habits:

@Pyrephox said in GMs: Typical Player/GM Bad Habits:

No-selling character skills and abilities. I don't want or expect a single PC ability to be an instant win button on any scenario, but the times when GMs have shut down or bent over backwards to decide a character's extremely relevant skills/abilities Just Don't Work because they didn't think about them when building the challenge is kinda silly.

OMG this is so frustrating. My current TT GM does this. Like 5e, rolling above 15 is supposed to be good for many things, but he constantly only gives good info for spots or history checks with 20+. Ugh.

This actually reminds me of another, more MU* exclusive, that's sort of a...combined GM/Player bad habit:

Threat Inflation/Arms Race: The tendency in MU*s, due to the proliferation of XP, for anything less than the 'absolute highest score' in a given skill or ability to be considered inadequate for contributing to anything. From the GM side, this often involves setting TNs/NPC abilities so high to challenge the top tier of PCs that anyone not at that level might as well not be there, and from the player side, this often involves a) racing for The Absolute Top as fast as possible, and b) being OOCly and ICly dismissive of a PC's abilities if they aren't the absolute best possible.

@Roz said in PC vs Player Assumptions:

Some people just have a talent for picking up clues and putting together answers. I've known players who become infamous for coming up with potential answers that the GM goes "damn I wish it WAS that." It usually doesn't really have anything to do with intelligence or inside information; some people just have a knack for it. Maybe a certain level of experience with a GM might give a player an instinct for their particular style, the way that playing a bunch of point-and-click adventure games gives you an instinct for how a certain series might approach/construct their puzzles, but that's just familiarity.

tl;dr some people just have a knack for it

And sometimes it's just because a player's mind works well for a specific GM. Like - a lot of 'mysteries' tend to boil down to 'how much do you think like the GM thinks', so someone can be REALLY GOOD at solving one, and absolutely horrible at solving another, and the only difference is that one is designed by someone whose thinking patterns the player 'gets' more easily.

It's one of the reasons why I really try to lean towards relying on stats and statted abilities rather than player intuition for mysteries and investigations and riddles, these days. And trying to do less gating of information and more 'here's the information, which poses an interesting problem, NOW what do you do'.

Smaller scenes are, I think, very important when it comes to really engaging everyone. Even the best GM and players can struggle with giving everyone something meaningful when there are 10 PCs, and several of them overlap specialties.

I always make the text description first, then look for a PB that fits it - which often means doing a google image search for things like 'young woman freckles' or something. Even once I find a potential person, I try to find a picture that gets across the character - I've had PBs where I can only really use ONE image of them, because it fits the personality of the character, but none of the others do.

That said, I don't really care about other people's PBs, and will usually go from the written description. Anime or drawn PBs don't bother me at all, but doing nothing but linking a picture in your desc, or having some incredibly generic and unhelpful desc like 'this is a person' drives me up the wall.