Posts made by Pyrephox

My cynical suspicion, after Arx, is that I'd give it three months before the Chancellor's daughter is married to the head of the Black Raven in a huge public ceremony attended with pride by the city's finest humans, and several of the pixie prostitutes are given mansions in the Square by their human True Loves.

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.

@RDC said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

ITT @Kanye-Qwest snidely complains about how snide and weird it is to assume people will, at least via osmosis, get a pretty inoffensively shallow Star Wars joke.

ON TOPIC: Tell me about Dark Men. I have been wondering what the actual conflict is on Gray Harbor and what there is to be scared of, IC, to drive RP.

Just in my own experiences:

The Veil itself is pretty scary. It's an alien realm that PCs are only just being able to explore, and while it's not evil, it's absolutely dangerous and in ways PCs don't really understand, yet. A fair amount of conflict is probably going to come from people poking at the Veil and the Veil poking back.

Then you have the Dark Men, of course, who are actively malevolent, and who feed on the negative emotions of humans, especially humans who 'Glimmer' (have psychic powers). It means that the town, in general, has a fucked-up Derry sort of vibe, because even people who don't understand what's going on are on edge more, and you've got an outsized crime and suicide rate.

Which also leads to a lot of people tending to app in characters with some traumatic backgrounds - some supernatural (like a screwed up asylum for people who Glimmer) and some very mundane (abuse, neglect, loss). So a fair amount of conflict is PCs dealing with that - in a setting where a supernatural force that knows all your worse fears and insecurities actively does not want you to get over it, but does want you to hurt. Which adds a fun additional element to the character-development/soap opera stuff.

Also, it's not a PVP game, but you do have characters with opposed agendas/desires - there are criminals and cops, for example. I think people are still feeling out how to navigate that in ways that are fun for everyone, but the playerbase thus far has seemed pretty willing to have conflict IC while remaining chill OOC, and to respect the difference between 'fun conflict' over 'and I must murder this PC and everyone they know because it is what my character would do'. Which is something that I very much hope continues.

@Rinel said in Gray Harbor Discussion:

Having derailed this thread, I'm going to do my best to re-rail it.

I like the Dark Men but I'm struggling with how to thematically have them pose a threat. In my last scene I wrote it so that their attention was displayed by a small area of woodland going totally still in the middle of an oncoming storm making everything windy, and a fog rising out of the forest edge. But I'm not sure if that's too physical for them?

Of course I can just retroactively have it be done by a shadowy human working for them, so it's not a huge deal, but it does have me wondering.

My understanding is that the Dark Men don't typically manifest physically very much at all - they mostly drag people into Dreams (some of which CAN be fairly subtle) and torment them there. But never in 'beat you up directly' sort of way; they don't have a physical body and aren't, that any PC knows, directly targetable or killable. They're mostly the dark whispers and subtle influences that gradually drive you mad - feelings of being watched, whispers at the edges of your consciousness, psychic torments, eventually Dreams.

But! That sounds pretty cool as a Thing, whether it is a Dark Men Thing or just a Thing, and no one on grid knows a lot about them. There's a lot from the Veil that can pose threats - it doesn't have to be the Dark Men.

I'm enjoying Gray Harbor. It's active, modern horror/fantasy that isn't WoD and has a laid back, semi-sandbox style. There's metaplot and plot to get involved in, but you can also just do your own thing, including supernatural things, without trouble. People are nice, staff seem sane, and I've had fun.

It IS in beta, so don't get too attached to stuff as the system undergoes some tweaks and expansions as things get shaken out in play.

Website

@Killer-Klown These days, I take a lot of my GMing tips from watching really good movies and TV shows. Shows that deal with very competent protagonists (like Leverage, Person of Interest, etc.) give some very good tips on how to challenge characters like that without no-selling their abilities, and how to have setbacks, reversals, and complications that don't amount to 'and you find nothing' or 'this is a dead end'.

These days, I will sometimes literally sit down with a pen and notebook and watch an action movie, or a mystery show, and write down how it handles plot structure, revelations, setbacks, and clues. And try to translate those dynamics for RPGs. It's made for more interesting and dynamic games, to me.

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

@Sparks Yeah. I think "no, but" is a different but related problem. I am okay with being told 'no' if it's to save me time and redirect my actual efforts into something productive. If it's just a straight up dead end, though, it's super frustrating.

Oh god, there is nothing more frustrating than being told, "Yeah, even though you rolled incredibly well at this investigation/whatever, because you aren't taking the right OOC tack, you don't find anything. Sorry!"

Except maybe being told that at the end of a four hour scene in which you try every possible method you can think of to progress, only to have the GM eventually say the above.

@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.

When I am the GM, from players:

Overplanning/Sabotaging Themselves With Reality. I, overwhelmingly, run in a cinematic mode, and probably one of the worst things that players can do in something I run is to overthink it. I cannot count the times I've had a scene come to a painful halt because the PCs, or a small subset of PCs, cannot make themselves take a forward step without trying to obsessively plan out the Best Possible Option. Often by bringing in RL knowledge that isn't really applicable - dude, I don't care that Hacking Doesn't Work Like That if we're playing CoD - you tell me what you want to do, and if I can at all justify it being a networkable thing, I'll probably let you roll for it, and if I don't, I'll tell you exactly why and what your character might need to do to make it work. (I.e. it will be a challenge not a shutdown - 'oh, this is a protected internal network, so you'll have to log in from X specific terminal to get access'.)

How I address this: Trying to make sure that the consequences of actions that players take, whether they are successes or failures for the PCs, are fun for the players. Which sometimes leads to a PC intimidating the hell out of a group of gang members and short-circuiting what had been PLANNED to be a combat, but which later led to a pretty awesome car scene with other gang members t-boning the PCs' getaway car at speed. I try to be up front about wanting to reward action with fun, and I've tried to embrace 'failing forward' in order to keep things moving so that people don't have to fear that if they miss a single step or fail a single roll, they're going to get the dreaded 'you find nothing and the two hours we've spent on this scene is wasted'.

When I am the Player, from GMs:

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. And makes me grumpy. This definitely ties into the school of thought of "Social skills aren't 'mind control', so you will never persuade an NPC to ever give up anything that they don't want to or to back down when I want a combat or to do anything against their best interests, no matter how the rules for the skills are written or how well you roll," but it's not exclusive to that.

Just...let PCs be good at their stuff. A single case of 'oh my, the telepath meets someone immune to mind-reading' can be fun, dramatic, and honestly pretty amazing if it's played well. But the fifth time in as many sessions? At that point, it's just frustration and boredom.

@Roz True story. He was a work friend invited by another player, and was obnoxious the whole session, culminating in deciding that his PC had decided that nothing that was happening was real (it was a portal fantasy 'normal world characters end up in fantasy world' - I WAS FOURTEEN OKAY?? scenario) so he'd naturally start raping the women he met.

However, we played in my apartment, and everyone involved was MY group of friends except the one guy he knew from work (who was absolutely fucking mortified at his behavior), so I had no social pressure against telling him he wasn't welcome to stay or to come back, even as a fourteen year old.

I think he thought that, since I was the only girl in the gaming group, the rest of the guys would think it was funny. And did not realize that I was the one who had taught all of them the game and that I didn't generally pick assholes as friends.

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.

@Three-Eyed-Crow said in If you work hard, son, maybe someday you'll RP:

@Ninjakitten
I also feel bad for 'wasting' scene numbers but for no real good reason. I've had decent luck with just starting open scenes and saying they exist, though, so I figure that's worth the occasional scene going unused and deleted.

It would be really awesome to be able to delete unshared scenes, though. My few false starts just hang out there, forever, and I haaaaaaaate it.

I can't do it. It's very hard for me to adapt a character built for one specific setting/theme and then transplant them to a new place/theme. I would, in my heart of hearts, prefer other people not do it, either, especially if it's not a reboot built to take the new setting/theme into account, but rather a transplant where the character is the exact same character, just dropped in a new place.

Everybody's gotta chase their joy, and I definitely feel the sadness of creating a character you love only for the game not to click or to fall through too soon, but I just find it really difficult to do.

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

@mietze There's this, too. My experience with OOC Masq in WoD games is that people then get too obsessed about how it was broken, and if it was broken, and how someone plans to screw them over using it. It sort of engenders paranoia that I, at least, find unpleasant to try to game through.

I like both, but I think they suit very different games.

If a game relies on intrigue, mystery, or discovery, where it's assumed that characters will have hidden qualities or factional alliances, then I personally prefer some level of OOC Masq. I like that 'ah ha' moment, or 'wow' moment when something unknown is discovered. That feeling when your PC's best bud turns out to be working for your dire enemies the whole time? Beautiful, and I love that shock to be OOC as much as IC.

On the other hand, you can have a LOT of fun on games where everything is on the table and it's less about reacting to the unexpected than it is about seeking out exciting possibilities. You can still absolutely play out the plot of your PC's best friend being a mole for the bad guys, and it's just as affecting, to me, but it's a different sort of feeling.

I don't really think there's a "right" answer - just a "right for this game and/or this player" answer.

I can barely even remember NOT being a nerd, but I think one of the earliest formative experiences that I can clearly recall was the children's book version of 'Little Fuzzy'. It was beautifully illustrated, I got it very young, and it pretty much hooked me on science fiction forever. Everything else just flowed outward. It's a bit odd, in that neither of my parents share my interests, although my mother DID get me into horror movies, for certain. But fantasy/SF just came from books that I could grab.

@Apos In that case? It was kind of both, oh yes.

Has anyone started looking at this? Planning to Kickstart it? Maybe for a CoD MU*?

I haven't put money down on it, yet, but I love the idea, and the Sworn/False factions look like they'd work great for a MU* where multiple spheres would like a reason to interact without being forced to be super-friends-forever.

Also, weird fucking reality warping and the God-Machine are my jams.

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.)