Posts made by Pyrephox

One of the subsystems in its draft form, for the process by which characters can discover new flora and fauna, capture and study it, and eventually cultivate it for use by the colony (if it is able to be used for that).

The purpose here is to provide a blueprint for players to run the process with minimal bottlenecks from staff, and to know exactly what they need to do to achieve an end result, while leaving a lot of room for playing things out.

Discovering New Food

While it is definitely possible to just start chowing down on purple grass or that twelve-legged bug that was crawling up your trousers and hope for the best, that’s not likely to be the best way to find a stable supply of food for the 100+ colonists who have been awakened. Much less the thousands of colonists to come. There are four phases of creating a viable source of food for the colony:

Exploration: First, you have to find whatever it is you want to try to eat (or build with, or make clothes from, etc.) out in the wilderness. This requires a +job or a PRP to go out and find samples of whatever it is you want to develop. You can highlight a specific plant/animal/material that comes up in a scene, or you can specify certain criteria (“I want to find small, fast-breeding meat producers.”) that you think the colony might need. Someone will have to make a Survival roll vs 6 + the number of specific criteria (So, “I want to find an edible vegetable” is a straight 6 but might find you anything from a tuber that feeds on blood to a sour grain that froths into a fermenting foam almost immediately when ground, while “I want to find a sweet vegetable appropriate for making Earth-style breads and pastries that can be cultivated easily near the ship” would be an 8, because you’re asking for two specifics beyond ‘edible vegetable’ - that it has a sweet taste, and that it can be cultivated easily near the colony ship.) in your search. Failure on this roll usually means that the sample is guaranteed to have some significant drawback that will have to be overcome before it can be added to the food supply. A crushing success on this roll usually means that the sample is guaranteed to reveal some un-asked-for benefit that can be exploited if the sample is thoroughly studied and cultivated.

Capture: Once a viable sample has been located, play a scene to secure it. This might be run by staff, but can also be run by the players or another player based on the information returned by the job or PrP runner. This doesn’t have to be a dangerous scene, but it can be, and depending on what you’re looking for, there might be an inherent difficulty: for example, if you want to try to domesticate a native animal for a battle-capable beast of burden, you’re probably going after something large, brave, and with defensive capabilities - that has no fear of humans. Have fun!

Study: Once you have samples and can return them to the ship, there will usually be a Medical Sciences and a Chemical Sciences check, at a minimum, to see if the sample can serve as a food source right out of the field, if it will need specialized breeding or genetic alteration, or if it has unexpected or unsuitable side-effects. Success on the roll will usually uncover the sample's mechanical effects after a set time period, while failure on the roll will only uncover a few of them, positive or negative. Characters can study multiple times, but they generally require fresh samples to do so, which should be acquired through scenes. You can, of course, choose to skip this step and simply consume the item! This may lead to character death, illness, or entertaining side-effects, but it is absolutely an option. Choosing to consume native fauna and flora without studying it first is considered to be consenting to all potential consequences.

Cultivate: Assuming that something has been found to be safe for consumption, either through the rigorous process of study by qualified professionals, or by shoving it in your face and seeing what happens, then it can be cultivated provided the proper skills and conditions are available. This is considered a Project. Once the Project is complete, it’s assumed that the item has now been added to the list of the colony’s resources and that scavenging patrols are regularly hunting/harvesting it. This raises the Colony’s morale and health by a set amount based on the food quality of the item and any special attributes it might have, as well as if it is a new ‘niche’ (a type of food that the colony doesn’t currently have a lot of, like meat, or starch, or fiber). Successful cultivation also serves as a positive event to affect the colony's survivability rating.

@secretfire said in Gamecrafting: Excelsior:

This sounds like "Sid Mier's ALPHA CENTAURI: The Mush"

I'm down for that.

So which faction are Gaia's Stepdaughters?

I have not played that! So I don't know. Based on the name, and what Google tells me, either Xenoecology Unlimited or The Navidison Initiative could have aspects of it. XU leans more towards hard science, while TNI is more of a spiritual movement that tends to have a lot of skilled geneticists involved.

One of the things that I'd like to do to help characters distinguish themselves is add the ability for each character to purchase a Background and an Affinity. These are separate from Background skills - each allows a character to have something that they can spend LP (again, assuming Ares) on to give them a special effect or a critical success on certain rolls.

The purpose of this is two-fold: one, to slow down character growth by giving people useful things to do with their LP outside of just buying stats and skills, and to allow character past the XP cap for stats and skills to continue to spend LP on things that aren't just background skills.

Example of a Background:

Criminal: You’re no stranger to the underworld and the skills required to survive there, whether it was a bit of smuggling on the side, or full-time wetwork for one of the many criminal organizations of known space. You can spend an LP to auto-succeed on an uncontested (by PCs) Stealth roll, and gain the Background Skill Cracking Security: ** for free.

Example of an Affinity:

Technowizardry: You’re one of those people who probably ended up in tech support (formally or not) and whenever you walk in the room, whatever was going wrong works again...until you leave. You can spend 1 LP to make a piece of broken technology work again. This technology is not fixed, but it will do what it needs to do just long enough for you to finish an immediate task. For multi-system technologies (like the Excelsior), this effect is limited to a single console or subsystem. You don't have to know what the technology is SUPPOSED to do, but operating something without determining its function first is a good way to get vaporized.

So, as you can see - Backgrounds give you the ability to spend LP to really nail a single roll when it counts, as well as a free Background Skill. Affinities offer a way to spend an LP to create a more qualitative effect. Both are meant to provide an LP sink, but also to give people ways to create characters are more than their stats and skills, without having to create five hundred 'special abilities'.

Further customization, though, can be found through genetic and cybernetic enhancements. These won't be widely available at the start of the game (since the crashed ship doesn't have a fully functioning genetic manipulation bay, or cybernetic surgery), but both of those things can be established through the Project system.

So, I've been hankering for a very specific sort of game for a very long time, and finally got around to writing down some information. Now that Ares is out, I actually think that (with some tweaks) the kind of play that Ares promotes might be a good fit for what I want from the game. It's not something that I'd ever expect to have a broad appeal: it's SF, but not hard SF with reams and reams of specialized equipment, but rather a focus on colonization and discovery, with some light sim elements (in that building the colony is a tentpole of the gameplay, and the colony has stats which can be impacted by events, which in turn impact other events, and it is entirely possible for the colony to fail and pretty much everyone to die...although that's not LIKELY. But it is possible) and some creative elements (in that players will have a hand in creating flora and fauna as it's discovered) and some survival elements (diseases are a thing, requiring food supplies is a thing, environmental hazards are a thing, etc.).

So, after writing far too much on it, I thought why not toss some of it out and see what other people think. It's definitely a niche project, but feedback is appreciated. I'll start with just the premise and 'who the characters are' and 'what do they do' broad strokes, but I can elaborate on most anything if people are interested.

Premise

All characters are crew and cargo of the colony ship Excelsior, which was bound for an officially chartered planet on the edge of explored space. Instead, after an unknown disaster in transit, the ship’s automated systems have crash-landed the vessel on an entirely unknown planet, outside of the known systems. Excelsior, once grounded, was never meant to take off again, and as the planet proves not immediately inimical to human life, the ship initiates colonization protocols, and its crew and cargo awaken.

What Do Characters Do?

There are three ‘core’ aspects of play on Excelsior, which will be facilitated and supported by staff:

Survival: The planet that the Excelsior has landed on is entirely unprepared for human colonization, and none of the scouting logs and readings in the ship’s databanks are relevant to it. Discovering and surviving the dangers is a key aspect of game play - there will be environmental hazards, predators, diseases, and unknown factors to discover, survive, and overcome. This aspect of play encourages and primarily engages scientific and exploration based characters.

Civilization Building: Each colonist and crew member was issued a specific plot of land with specific resources and rights - none of which are valid anymore. The agreed upon Charter for the creation of a probationary colonial government could, arguably, also no longer be valid. Determining how to set up the new government, how to honor (or not honor) the land grants, and other social and organizational issues is an ongoing source of conflict and negotiation, especially between factions who had originally planned to be separated from each other, but now must rely on others for survival in an unregimented environment. This aspect of play encourages and primarily engages diplomatic and social based characters.

Mysteries: The planet and vessel offer mysteries based in the past, and uncovered in the present. One of the biggest questions to resolve in the beginning is - how did the Excelsior get so badly off-course, and then choose to crash land on a planet that happened to be habitable by humanity? Was it truly an accident? And if it wasn’t, what was the purpose and - more importantly - are the perpetrators still in the colony and planning further disruptions? However, as the world is explored, further mysteries are uncovered with ruins and signs of ancient alien civilizations, as well as technology of unknown purpose and operation. This aspect of play encourages and primarily engages investigative and intellectual based characters.

Who Are The Characters?

Human: There are no playable alien races in Excelsior. Humanity has come in contact with a few alien species, but the level of integration is minimal.

Factions: The original colony plan had several organizational charters, as well as numerous independent settlers. The organizational charters provide starting factions, although it is expected that characters can create new ones or dissolve old ones as the game progresses.

Excelsior Crew: Excelsior’s crew were originally meant to serve as an immediate provisional government, and have been trained to work together, as well as having a hierarchy headed by the Captain, then the Executive Officer, three Division Heads (Engineering, Astrogation, and Internal Systems), and a Colonial Manager.

Solip Schism Services: Employees and executives of a megacorp who were chartered a significant amount of land and mineral resource rights in EUX-065’s southern continent. SSS specializes in resource extraction, processing, and shipment.

Xenoecology Unlimited: Researchers and administrators associated with a system-spanning nonprofit organization charged with attempting to catalog and preserve examples of all known life. Since every new planet is teeming with undiscovered flora and fauna, it is accepted that the fieldwork is a life appointment.

Interstellar Protectors: Members of a private security firm who were contracted by the colony to provide law enforcement and protection for the first five years of the colony, until native systems could be developed and filled. IP has a policing division and a quasi-military division.

The Navidison Initiative: A colonist collective who agreed in their organizational charter to abide by the teachings of Ophelia Navidison, a psychologist and theologian who preached genetic integration between human and environment; most members of TNI have genetic enhancements meant to aid them in adaptation with their chosen homeworld. This is not their chosen homeworld.

Independents: In addition to the orgs, there are thousands of colonists who gathered the money to pay for their own charter, and who may come from a wide variety of backgrounds, skills, and affiliations.

Colonists: All characters are colonists from the Excelsior. There are no natives or native humans on the planet, nor will there be any additional drops or contact with the wider civilization of humanity in the initial stages (and possibly not ever). New characters may either be freshly unthawed from the colony banks, or they can have been in the background and ‘emerge’ as main characters, but no non-Excelsior origins are accepted.

Although it hasn't been about sexual/romantic discomfort, I have had other players occasionally reach out and ask if I'm okay about a specific thing that is happening or has happened to my character. I've never, myself, considered it creepy or unwelcome, even when I've been entirely bewildered by what they were concerned about. So, a simple 'hey, are you okay with what X is doing' sort of thing never seems out of line to me. Just if they say 'yeah', let it go, move on, etc.

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.)

What KIND of staff? There are several different roles that staff might fill, and while some can do them all, or some combination of them, it's not neccessary, I think. For me, staff has:

• Administrative role - This is the bookkeeping sort of stuff, like clearing jobs, record keeping, approvals, etc. Routine tasks that keep the game running.
• Story role - Developing and maintaining theme, creating plots, changing the IC world in response to character action or inaction.
• Authoritative role - Mediation, moderation, and evaluation of players to deal with inevitable interpersonal disputes, behavior that makes the game less fun, and being the 'last word' on rules disputes.

A lot of times, we see the last two roles held by the same people, but they don't necessarily have to be. Back when a lot of MU*s had a 'player relations' staff, that person usually took on the last role and may or may not have any input into the other two roles.

Different people excel in each of those roles. You can have a single person with the traits that make them good at two or three at the same time, but that's a lot more rare.

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.

@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.

@RDC said in General Video Game Thread:

Has anyone played Disco Elysium? I'm hearing good things.

I'm enjoying it so far. There are a couple of irritating bugs, so I stopped to finish my playthrough of Tyranny (which also has irritating bugs, but I recognize they're never getting fixed, while I still have hope for DE) and will probably go back to it this weekend.

The advertising is a little misleading - it's not an open world game. You are playing a specific character with a specific history, through a specific set of events, and while there's a lot of flexibility in how those are accomplished, and a lot of fun side-quests, it's definitely not an open world game in the traditional sense. Everything I've seen also indicates that it's not a 60 hour game as some initial reports suggested - most people seem to be taking about 20-30 hours to get a satisfying playthrough including a lot of side quests.

The writing is the showcase and appeal; there's no combat mechanics, and your stats and skills are mostly represented through ability checks that happen automatically - these checks happen silently behind the scenes, and can add or remove options for responses, and provide a lot of different options (some of which are terrible). It allows for a lot of roleplaying, but also means a lot of reading. It's hilarious reading, for my money, but I'd probably recommend finding a let's play and watching, like, the first ten minutes to get an idea of tone and style.

I wouldn't mind helping build systems and setting for a game. I'm too much of a flake to run one, but I like writing and testing systems, especially these sorts of systems.

To me, any political game - truly political game - needs to be built from the resources up. The essence of politics is "how do we divide a limited number of resources among people who a) all want more than we have and b) don't want to just murder people". Everything that you do in politics is really negotiating that resource division question, whether the resources in question are land and tons of grain, or sparkly magic powder, or the favor of the Crown (or other equivalent social intangible resources).

So, you have to have a) limited commodities that every faction needs, b) limited commodities that each (but not every) faction has a source for, c) mutually agreed upon procedures for negotiating for these resources that you don't have using the resources that you need, and d) a schedule of escalation that is reasonably well known, reasonably predictable, and which requires risk and cost to employ.

A are your resources in play. These can be solid, immutable things like land, they can be transferable things like money or trade goods or people, or they can be intangible but desirable like whatever proxies you want to use for respect or favor, or something like a 'vote' if you want a republic or corporate board setting.

B means that every faction (whether you're going for small-politics where every PC is a faction in and of themselves or something more traditionally L&L like houses or families or guilds) has SOMETHING to bring to the table that they can use to negotiate for the things that they need but don't have. Every faction needs to have power, but they shouldn't have the SAME power, and no faction should have all the things they need as a stable entity. Stability kills political pressure.

C is both your IC setting culture AND your procedural help files - ideally, there is a procedure up for 'how do I overthrow a leader I don't like' and 'how do I grab someone's land' and 'how do I create NPC pressure' BEFORE ANYONE ASKS, and that procedure is widely disseminated, universally available, and referred to regularly. Culture plays into it by setting boundaries for IC behavior which, again, should be aggressively referred to - if yours is an honor society, then define what 'honor' means for people of that setting, define where it comes into play, define how to get around it, define how to recover when you fail to get around it, and make it clear what you can (and can't) get as a reward for successfully navigating it.

And, finally, D is where you lay out the powers that each faction can bring to bear when things aren't going their way, ideally with levels of escalation and specific costs to use. What's worthy of a border raid (and how much does a border raid cost in soldiers/supplies/time), what's worthy of a trade embargo (and how is that likely to impact my own lands), what's worthy of a declaration of war (and how do we run a war anyway).

I think that without all four domains of this, any political game runs into a lot of problems, because people want to fall back on their own assumptions and, quite frankly, very few MU*ers know a thing about politics, state-level economics, or historical/historically inspired versions of either. The great thing about breaking it down like this, though, is that no one has to. You don't have to be realistic, you just have to be consistent and predictable.

@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'.

I don't particularly care about stats, as long as the sheet is legal. But what I would like staff to look at and offer feedback on is the thematicness of the character, and if they see a) any positive plot hooks that can help the character engage with the game right from the start and b) any ways in which the character doesn't match with theme or might struggle to find RP in the current state of the game. I don't care how many schoolteachers who mysteriously have massive combat stats there are, as long as that's a concept that fits in the game theme and will find play.

Usually, I'd do round by round vs rolls, but as I start to think about it more, I honestly think three rolls at the beginning, best of three takes it, and then you can narrate the fight however you like for as long as you like as long as the person who won the dice contest comes out on top in the end.

Assuming that you don't just talk it out and decide how it goes.

I've found some great new artists/bands by clicking on other people's playlists, so sure! I don't usually associate the songs with the characters in the same way that the player who made them does, but it does absolutely no harm.

@Tinuviel said in Cyberrun:

@Wizz said in Cyberrun:

Nobody here is on the fence about pedophilia, dude

I mean... I'm in the camp of "paedophilia is a mental health condition, child molestation is the crime." But that's just semantics in a conversation like this.

It's actually a pretty important distinction, considering that most child sexual abusers aren't pedophiles. They're opportunistic predators who have access to children, limited oversight, and an organizational culture that views them as more valuable than their victims. There's just a certain number of human beings who, when given power over people and an organization they know will support them, tend to exploit and abuse those people physically, emotionally, economically, and sexually.

What you do to identify and treat pedophiles and what you do to identify (and more importantly, stop) the typical child sexual abuser are actually very different, and when we focus on pedophiles over who's actually abusing kids, it's actively detrimental to being able to teach people what to look out for and how to address abuse within their organizations (whether those are families, churches, schools, sports teams, etc.)

It's sort of the same reason that the 'Stranger Danger' nonsense from the 80s wasn't very effective - because most people who abduct and abuse children //aren't// strangers.

@Ghost said in Cyberrun:

@surreality said in Cyberrun:

what sort of website would someone want PenDes to have?

When I wrote this I was directly alluding to the fact that an online gaming site wouldn't want to advertise 'online simulated pedophilia' because then it would fall onto the radar of watchdog groups and investigators. Of course they wouldn't have a website. Best keep the haven of pedophilia RP a hush hush underground club.

If only these pedophiles were also slut shamers, right? They'd be in trouble, then.

Hahaha...no.

First of all, there is a whole lot of 'online simulated child molestation/sex/rape' available on the internet, indexed and accessible to anyone who wants it. Why? Because it's not illegal in most countries. Because no actual children are harmed. Because much like the murder of simulated people, nobody in law gives a fuck about the molestation of simulated children. Because those children don't exist, and weirdly enough, in crimes that actually matters.

Because there are far, far more actual kids getting actually raped and trafficked than child welfare or law enforcement can even close to keep up with, and the last thing they need is some idiot pearlclutching chucklefucks cluttering up their already horrific and overloaded dockets trying to report consensual fake sex between adults because it's icky.

Please be aware that anyone who harasses law enforcement to try and get them to investigate text sex games is someone who is taking up time those investigators can be using to investigate actual crimes, hurting actual kids, involving actual child rapists. No one involved in child welfare is going to thank you for taking their time away from laying the groundwork necessary to get a kid away from their stepfather, or to shut down a child trafficking ring, in order to investigate forty year olds who like to call each other Daddy and Baby Girl while pretend-fucking.

People enjoy fantasizing about taboo shit. It does not, at all, mean they want to do taboo shit in real life - in fact, that's the appeal of the taboo, whatever that taboo is. Just...don't play the damned game. It looks like it's set up where you literally never have to think about the icky sex other people are pretending to have.

The thing that often gets confused in this specific situation is that there's often some serious blurring of IC/OOC lines when it comes to 'discipline' scenes. Which is to say that they're often intended to be an IC means of correcting behavior that the discipliner finds annoying/disruptive/incorrect OOC, which is why there's often a desire to have the 'discipline' be unpleasant for the player. When, honestly, things like 'this character is acting wildly out of theme/reason for their organization' is usually an OOC problem, and should be addressed by an OOC discussion and/or uninviting the player from the org involved.

But we tend to be very conflict adverse (I am not at all immune to this), so we try 'IC discipline' first, even when what we're really hoping is that the player realizes that this isn't fun for anyone but him/her, and stops doing whatever it is they're doing. So it has to be OOC unpleasant, rather than just IC unpleasant.

But this, of course, usually ends up feeding drama than solving anything.

I generally try to think of a concept that will a) fit the game setting/theme as best I can, b) has a 'hook' that I can see being desired and useful within the concept of the game, and c) is something that I can really see myself playing. Needed/wanted concepts lists (or questions) are an inspiration to me, because it helps fill in that A and B requirement right up front.

Having a character that feels USEFUL really is important to me. I don't need things to revolve around the character, or for the character to be vital, but I do need to be able to look around and go, "Okay, my character can help progress things by doing THAT." It does mean that when I'm looking for regular playgroups, I tend to stay away from characters which are similar to mine in skillsets/abilities UNLESS the other character's personality/circumstances are different enough that how the two characters USE those abilities are likely to be very different.