Best posts made by Pyrephox

Another thing that should be mentioned - not having the AP to share a @clue never means that you can't share the /information/. All it means is that you can't share the proof at that moment - a scribe hasn't finished copying the journals, you're not in the right place to break out that old book or scrap of artifact, whatever. But that doesn't mean you have to put off someone who you want to know something - just tell them the information, and then share the @clue when you have time. Not having AP isn't ever really a good excuse for not telling something what they may need to know.

But we do sometimes need to thoughtfully consider what other people actually need to know, and it's not always "clue hording" to not widely share around clues that could have consequences. ICly, we've already seen a lot of people - mostly NPCs but some PCs - get killed or worse because PCs felt the need to blab about everything they know in public.

That would be fine, so long as their effects on NPCs/the world were explicit and substantial enough to warrant social skills costing the same amount as combat/magic skills which CAN be used to affect PCs, OR if combat/magic skills also could not be used to affect PCs except through the same indirect means (like, you could beat up someone's NPC ghouls, but not their PC ghouls), OR if social skills cost proportionately less to buy than combat/magic skills to reflect their restricted utility in the game.

@misadventure The thing is, you don't need to detail that. This is /exactly/ the sort of thing that cinematic game systems are designed to allow to happen. Someone has a skill involving this (which could be as broad as 'shenanigans' or 'politics' or as detailed as 'property law' or 'real estate manipulation') they roll it, they succeed, and discover "there's a loophole in the law that allows you to do X" (or allowed NPC Y to do X), and then you focus on /what are you going to do now/.

MU*s get too bogged down in the details of certain things, and don't focus on the INTERESTING part, which is: what do the PCs do now? (And don't make them have to research property law to Do Something, either - 'we want to close that loophole' okay, great, you can do that by a Charisma/Media path of whipping up public support/knowledge, an Intellect/Politics path of working with the establishment to get the law changed, or a Wits/Forgery path of creating false documentation that's better than the false documentation that these guys have. What's your pleasure?" Then play out from there.)

@three-eyed-crow I don't think there should be 'grind' associated with the systems, to be honest. I don't think that's what +work was originally intended to do or create, and that feeling of 'must grind' that's infected the playerbase is one of the things I'd probably want to put on a list to be looked at.

I think, if I were waving a magic wand and recoding an Arx-like game from scratch, I'd want the resources to generate from the lands, but not in an active 'run this code' way, but instead informed by character choices and abilities.

For example, something I was playing with in scripting on my own, was having the ability to assign parcels of land to a 'steward', who would have some powers over the land (mostly, determining what kind of resource it would produce: taxes (silver), troops, trade goods, crafted goods, etc.), but those would be set with a single command, and then at each rollover, the steward's relevant skill/stat would be checked each week, along with the land's inherent value (can't get blood from a stone, or wheat from a wasteland), and generate a certain, variable number of resources of the type chosen. Ideally, taxes would be automatically extracted to send up the ladder, and then the rulers of the lands could decide how to USE those resources, whether it's buying or selling to a central market, which could then be bought/sold by others, or whether to invest in trade treaties with other lands, etc.

Then, events and actions could just tweak the inherent production capabilities of the land in the formula up or down, as needed.

I haven't gotten very far, I admit, because I code for crap.

@sparks Honestly, my only problem with prestige as it stood was just how many other systems it boosted, and it seems like you guys are working on that. The numbers themselves don't mean anything to me, just what the numbers allow you to do! I feel like prestige should still factor heavily in social resource generation (maybe not so much in either military or economic, but maybe use related propriety mods for that instead? Like someone who is a 'Hero' and a 'Knight' and a 'Veteran' should probably do /really well/ when recruiting military people, etc.). and also be REALLY GOOD at changing affection/respect for orgs, for themselves or others, somehow. When one of the best known people in the city singles out someone and says, "This person is a special person," then NPCs should take great notice. That's partially reflected in Praise, to be sure, and org/donate/hype, but I feel like maybe something that is more directly reflected in actions and dominion? Kickass social characters may be able to tax at a much higher level without the people getting all revolting (because they're spending their time being all diplomatic), and if they know someone is trying to, say, recruit for an EVIL CULT in their backyard, they should be able to have a great sway on the way the population sees that group (for good OR for ill, if they're on Team Evil).

TS is hard for me, and I'm not very good at it, so I usually fade to black. I enjoy flirtation and foreplay, whether playing a male or female character, but the actual /sex/ part...I've never quite gotten something that I've been happy with, as a descriptor of that. I periodically hit the sex MU*s to try and brush up on my ability to write sex/get over my hangups about writing sex, but I never feel very good at it.

I often fear, in romantic relationships IC, that I'm the worst sort of tease, because of how much I /do/ enjoy flirtation and all the things building up to sex, but then pull a, "Do you mind if we fade to black?" I feel bad about it - although I will say that no player I've played beside has ever MADE me feel bad about it, or tried to pressure me into playing something I didn't want. (At least, once we got that far into an actual RP relationship. Weirdo creepers certainly have - "writhing loincloth" remains a phrase that lives in infamy in my memory - but people I actually enjoy playing with enough to WANT an IC relationship with their characters have been cool.)

I think that's waaaaay overthinking the whole concept.

It's important to remember - the 'X-Card' nor any of the other affiliated ideas is not a 'rule' by which anyone must abide. At no point are RPG Police coming to your game and saying YOU MUST DO THIS OR ELSE. There's no authority. There's no punishment.

All it does is provide another method for a player (who I tend to presume is a person who I want to have a good time at my gaming table) to signal that they are uncomfortable with an aspect of the game or not enjoying a thing that is happening at the table. I don't need a card or a 'rule' to respect that: respecting that is what I consider to be part of my duty as a GM. The card and 'rule' is just a way of letting my players know that I'm serious about it, and that I'm trying to accommodate nervousness they might have about speaking up about it in the moment.

That said, I've never played with an X-Card, but before running a horror game, I do outline the level of gore I expect to be a thing that happens, and ask people a) for any up-front no go areas, and b) remind them that if anything happens that makes the game turn from fun-scary to not-enjoyable, to let me know and we'll handle it immediately. Outside of horror, it's mostly the latter as a disclaimer, but I also take into account a few of the no-go areas for my regular players that I already know about (one player does not want to experience bad things happening to their character's father (any character they play), I just know that based on years of friendship, so I make sure that doesn't happen) and just build around it. Not because it's a RULE or someone's going to come in and force me to do so, but because I try to be a decent human being who is running a game for people to enjoy. I want them to have fun. If I were playing with strangers, in addition to my usual 'it's absolutely cool if something isn't working, just let me know' spiel, I could definitely see using an X-card or something like it so that all my players have a more fun time.

And I say that as someone who doesn't actually have a lot of content limits in what I can and will play or run, when I'm ready to do it. I don't squick easily, and the few times when I've been uncomfortable with where a game has gone, it's been because I've been uncomfortable with OOC elements (i.e. this male player is clearly getting his jollies off trying to get his teenaged girl GM (me) to narrate the results of him raping an NPC) at the table/in the game, not because I have problems with the content itself. Which an X-Card aids just as easily, especially when you don't want to explain something like, "Hey, I'm actually kind of uncomfortable with this (let's say) sexual content here because I and That Player Over There just broke up and I just don't want to touch sexy stuff while they're here for a bit, EVEN IF the sexy isn't normally a problem."

More tools for communication and comfort, then the better game people are going to tend to have. And that's, ultimately, what it's about.

I can go both ways, to be honest. I find trying to figure stuff out ICly to be legitimately thrilling, and I even enjoy realizing that I had the wrong end of the stick this whole time. Some of my fondest memories of Arx really are the times that I thought things were like X, then got a clue and changed my whole perception of what was going on.

On the other hand, there's a different sort of thrill to having everything on the table, so that you can coordinate and target 'fun I'm interested in' to a greater degree. It's actually pretty cool to be able to reach out to someone who seems interesting or fun and go, "Hey, I noticed that you were looking to do X - I'm pretty sure we can arrange something to have you dragged in by Y." Or being able to discuss things that aren't ICly something you're likely to ever find out, but that still have some relevance and can develop some resonance in how you're playing your character with other characters. (As an example - a character has an Issue with my character due to events in that character's past. That PC is unlikely to ever open up about those issues to my PC, but we the players can find fun ways to play off of that and have it come up, because we both know it's there.)

I do think that OOC mysteries work best in games where there is some amount of PC competition and stakes, while mysteries being IC only works best, I think, in environments where there is minimal PC competition.

@Auspice said in What game system would you prefer for a big-tent nWoD project?:

I have to disagree that aspirations encourage RP. I think they actually discourage it.

It's more work, for one. You don't just organically RP and earn XP. If your scene pings an aspiration, then you need to submit code to fulfill it and submit code to claim another.

And that if is a big factor, too. If your aspirations are 'meet someone new' and 'get into a fight' and the only RP being offered is from people your PC already knows to hang out and drink coffee....... well, you're just gonna sit OOC until one of the 'net gain' options comes along, right?

I'd argue that this last idea is outright poisonous to games. The idea of "I'm just gonna wait until X comes along," rather than going out and DOING X is pretty much exactly the wrong way to go about things.

And that's not a system problem. That's a player problem. And a problem player, if only in the passive sense of you know that's the person who is also sitting in the OOC room complaining about not getting RP, but also shooting down every RP idea that isn't exactly what they were looking for.

Just. Go out. Get into some trouble. Stop worrying so goddamn much and play the game.

@Auspice Which is why Aspirations are great? If you only have one or two scenes a week, you can actually think, "What would be fun to do with my limited time," write up literally two sentences for two short-term Aspirations, and then go out and make it happen.

Asp 1: Meet someone new.
Asp 2: Get in a fight.

pub Hey, anyone want to meet a new character in a bar brawl? I can set us up a scene.

@Arkandel Note that CoD as written DOES diversify XP options. You get beats for a LOT of things. It's just most of them do involve playing the game. Although 'showing up' is a way to get XP as well, and most games do include some level of auto XP. Which I understand, although I do think it exacerbates the problem of people sitting in OOC rooms gathering moss and XP until they can build their character eeeeexactly how they picture it in their head.

But, honestly, I'm totally okay with accepting that people won't engage with it. I tend to view XP and other rewards as a way (intentionally or not) of incentivising what you want to see people doing in the game. If you give people rewards for not doing anything, they're going to be incentivized to not do anything. If you give them rewards for going out and taking risks and doing stuff, you're going to get more people who go out and do stuff. Heck, even if it takes a player who would not venture out of the OOC at all in a week, and encourages them to do ONE SCENE, that's still more RP for your game. And they might have fun! And next week do another scene! And another!

Reward what you want to see, and you'll get the players that fit your game. Reward what you don't want to see, and you'll end up frustrated as players do what you rewarded them for.

Although I will say this: if you really want to slow down or reverse the pace of House growth and wealth growth - things are going to have to be destroyed. Not just armies that can be rehired, but real damage to the Houses and their lands. Fields are going to have to burn, cities are going to have to be sacked, things that people have invested hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of silver, into are going to have to be destroyed.

So that they can be rebuilt, or new things can be built in their places. You can have a cycle of growth and destruction, an artificially-enforced status quo, or you have endless expansion, and at some point, people are going to have to decide which one they'd rather have and realize that if they choose the first, it won't just hit That House Over There, but their own stuff is also gonna get wrecked, and try not to fuss too much about it.

Honestly, it's sort of one of those things I could see putting to an OOC vote with the players just to get it out in the open. Is it going to be a game where you can invest millions of silver and LOSE IT ALL and Houses will rise AND fall over time, is it going to be a game where Houses may get wealthier and won't suffer major setbacks but will never rise above their stations because we say so, or is it going to be a game where everyone just grows steadily (whether it's fast or slow) more badass and powerful over time?

All three of those are good games, depending on what you're looking for. But it would probably be a good idea to pick one and go forward, letting players have the opportunity to decide if it's for them or not.

Whatever the game is built to accommodate, and staff is capable of handling.

The biggest issue some games run into, IMO, isn't that characters are 'too powerful', but rather that a game is not designed to handle characters of that power level. By and large, most games are made to accommodate low to mid-power characters - by which, I mean characters who may have significant power, but based on the personal or immediate environmental level. A game can handle a mage who can throw fireballs, a werewolf who can tear one monster apart, or a businessman or gang leader who can control a building or small territory just fine.

Most games are not able to handle a mage who can blanket a city in ice, a werewolf pack with a spirit who can tear apart whole swaths of monsters, or even a mayor or lord who can command police forces, armies, and make changes that fundamentally shift economies and social structures.

High power characters need //different// challenges, not just challenges with higher numbers behind them. It's a struggle to accommodate them in the typical 'find thing, beat up thing' plot without making it either trivial for them or impossible for anyone who isn't them. I think a game has to be built to give them an arena that really showcases the privileges and perils of power...and most games aren't. Hell, most GMs aren't experienced in or interested in GMing plots at the upper end of power. That's true in tabletop, too - if you think about it, most tabletop games never get out of that 'heroic' phase, and the acquisition of real power is the end of a campaign.

So, I don't think there's an ideal power range for a game, but I do think a game needs to define the power range it's interested in, and then design itself around that, including not allowing apps below that range, and requiring retirements for characters who exceed it.

What I always want for my characters is interesting action and conflict, and these tend to be the things that are most difficult to get. Unfortunately, I'm prone to tell myself elaborate stories of, "How cool would it be IF..." and think of awesome things the character might be able to do. But none of them ever happen, and that's usually where I start to slide into burnout.

It's not 'be the hero' all the time, either (although it's definitely be the hero SOMETIMES - right now I have a character who is honestly more of the universe's butt monkey than I'm really all that happy with, but it is what it is), but it's more like - I want my character to have to make difficult choices which have meaningful effects on their life and SOME part of the game setting. It doesn't have to change the world, or even the city - but I like to see repercussions from what I do, I like to be able to have a character push the world, see it change, and have it push back.

And things have a tendency to just fade away in MU*s, with player/staff turnover, and so forth.

I'm not hugely susceptible to the need to exploit, but this definitely matches my observations over time. Especially if players can 'grind' for XP or other resources, they have a tendency to do it obsessively, no matter how UNFUN the actions required are.

At least part of it seems to be a need to 'keep up with the Joneses', and one of the things I think Ares does (in addition to the things @Clarion has mentioned) is institute caps on the 'main' skills and character attributes. You can still expand Background Skills, to continue that sense of progression, but I'm really starting to become a fan of slow XP progression, and upper level caps on any resource that can be gained, both in a single time period, and overall.

So, like, if you have a mechanism where someone can Do Something to earn XP, or Arx-like resources, or Luck Points, you can only gain so many in a single time period, and once you hit that limit, there is NO NEED to grind any further, and you can be assured that no one else is somehow getting 'more' by doing more. Likewise, you will eventually hit a ceiling where you just can't hold anymore of that resource, or spend anymore of that resource, and so you no longer have to worry about it.

Unknown Armies - for a different sort of urban fantasy game. The system is quite simple, but allows (almost demands) creating your own skills, so I don't know how easy it would be /to code/. Weird, lethal, great trauma mechanics, fun setting with some optional NPC factions that should be light in the world, if at all - PCs should be street-level players in the Occult Underground, and graduate up and out of the game when they reach global or cosmic levels.

7th Sea - Preferably set in Montaigne, with the political and swashbuckling shenanigans in the city above ground, and the ancient dungeon full of horrors and fun artifacts to find in dungeon crawl heisty fun below ground.

@krmbm If it were me (and it isn't) I would likely age everyone up. Not just debutantes, but just sort of glazing over the fact that a lot of the men with military and naval experience would have gotten those experiences starting at, like, 10-12 for naval sorts and not much older than that for army soldiers.

Thinking about it, I would also move away from 'large, well-populated' families, and instead outright encourage no more than 1-4 PCs per family; a title holder, heir, and a couple of younger siblings. And then other family connections being cousins/through marriage, because most of the ton was distantly related to each other /anyway/. Because the Regency plots most people go for aren't really about intra-family politics, but rather inter-family drama/romance/conflict. You want a lot of title-holders/heirs for people to chase, and having a lot of title-holders/heirs also allows you - if you want - to introduce light political drama through votes in Parliament and political maneuverings among the Whigs and Tories. There were actually several high-impact votes around this time period that could be inspirations for background plots (I wouldn't use the real world votes, nor be beholden to how those votes turned out). Also, the sons of Lords could (and did) stand for seats in the House of Commons, so Parliamentary drama wouldn't just be for title-holders.

@bear_necessities I think it's worth noting, too, that 'beta' and 'alpha' mean different things to different people. It's probably best that if you're opening a game in alpha or beta, you explain to players what that means.

Like, if I opened a game in beta, I'd be expecting to do hard system testing and revision, and early beta would probably involve XP wipes and rebuilds as systems were broken, re-developed, and redeployed, so I'd want players to know that before they got invested.

Trying to think back to social scenes I've really enjoyed -

1. Use the setting and environment. A scene that's grounded in something that's true for the game is a lot more fun to me than a scene that could happen anywhere. This includes incidental things like weather and NPC saturation/diversity.

2. Use NPCs. Now, this doesn't mean forcing other players to just play with NPCs and never even speak to your character (I've had a scene like this on a game, and it was BAFFLING), but a couple of colorful NPCs can give diverse PCs an immediate 'hook' to react to, and bond over.

3. Have things happen. This doesn't mean have STUPID things happen, but having a scene where something is happening outside of 'PCs meet and talk' adds flavor, depth, and hooks for people. A scene at a boxing match is usually more exciting than a scene sitting on a bench in an empty park. Fender-benders, bad minstrels, sudden weather changes, whatever.

4. Be passionate or strong-minded. I don't mean be pointlessly aggressive and escalate every situation to murder. But looking back, the most fun my social scenes have been were when PCs had strong opinions that they didn't immediately roll over on, or had personalities that /sparked/ on one another in exciting ways - which means that the PCs had to have personalities to spark with. Where social scenes feel like pulling teeth is almost always when I'm with a PC who just...has no real opinions about anything, wants to smooth out all disagreements, and is very live and let live to the point where it's like they're a frictionless sphere. Give me something! Be human!

@Arkandel said:

I'll bite.

Doors. How would you use them in everyday RP with other PCs?

I am not @tragedyjones but I'll take a stab at this one, with the caveat that this is only my experience/take on it.

With PCs, Doors, I find, are best used as a framework for OOC conversation about what would have the best chance of getting a PC to sign on to an idea or attempt at manipulation. They're great for a framework, because the initiating player has to develop a /concrete/ end goal. "My PC would like to convince your PC to support her in the upcoming election, and I'd like to work from the Doors system to do so." Assuming the other player is cool with that, you both now have a frame of reference, and can work out the answers to the following questions:

What's the targeted PC's initial disposition? Does My PC know something that might improve it if they accepted it ? (Soft leverage, or a scene/roll made to improve the initial disposition.)

How many Doors does the targeted PC have? Would (action of my PC) be something that has a chance of opening a Door? Would you like to scene this out, or should tickets to the Very Exclusive Event just arrive in your mailbox with a "Hope you like this," note from My PC? If my PC wanted to turn you against the other candidate, would you be comfortable with, perhaps, a contested and extended action while we scene debating the relative merits of the candidates?

Basically, I try to give the Target PC ultimate control over what has a chance of working (and if the desired goal is feasible at all), and then use the dice and the Doors mechanic to decide if it DOES work. Doors make a great framework for discussing social actions so that no one (unless they're just completely opposed to dicing social actions at all) feels railroaded or like the goalposts are being changed on them. Caveat: I haven't ever moved to Hard Leverage or Forcing Doors, so can't speak to that.