Posts made by Pyrephox

I love a good love story. I really do. But I absolutely admit that what I like /most/ is that period of tension, especially with rivals/opponents/potential enemies where wrestling with attraction is difficult and people are trying to manipulate each other. I want the UST to be through the roof, and flirtation, and will-they-won't-they, or an on again/off again relationship punctuated by periods of maybe even being on opposite sides (whether they're off or on), or things happen that strain the relationship. I don't really want unending angst, but I want TENSION. Conflict, whether it's internal to a character struggling between desires, or between the romantic characters, or whether it's imposed from without.

My ideal IC romantic relationship would be between two people who absolutely have no business being attracted to each other gradually coming to tolerate, then crave, one another, punctuated by occasionally trying to kill or ruin the other, but being /absolutely/ certain that 'nobody hurts them but ME'. All of it done somewhere between slow burn and buddy cop movie. And snark and flirtation liberally scattered in between.

This is a really interesting topic. OOC, I'm a straight cis woman. On MUs, I play about equal numbers of male and female characters. Most of them are straight, which made me try to think about why exactly that is. Outside of sex MUs I mostly fade to black anyway, so it's not discomfort with typing out the sex, or with being particularly titillated by the sex. I read fiction with all manner of romantic configurations and enjoy it.

Part of it, I admit, is the reputation "straight women playing gay men" tend to get on MU*s, and my own experiences with some of the worse examples of that demo (although nothing as bad as being shunned for not making a straight character gay!). So, even my male characters who are not straight tend to keep their non-straightness on the downlow and be discreet. Thomas on Darkwater, for example, was bi, but his successful relationships (to whatever extent any relationship with Thomas could ever be called 'successful' since he was a terrible person in so many ways) were with women; he had an unvoiced attraction to one other male character, and an outright crush on another, who turned him down. So I don't even know that he counts, since his bisexuality was more of an informed trait that I knew about, but I'd be surprised that more than a couple other PCs did. As for women attracted to women, mostly I've not found the right dynamic that clicks for me between two women characters thus far. I have played a couple of lesbian characters, but all of their relationships were off-screen with NPCs rather than onscreen.

I've not really received a lot of harassment for my characters' sexualities, although people are sometimes surprised that I'm a woman when I'm playing a male character (and at least once refused to believe that I was, actually, a woman). I've had people assume that I'm gay when I play a male character who is attracted to women, but mostly on sex MU*s, if it happens to come up.

Captain Marvel was wonderful! Loved it from start to finish. Lots of fun action, good humor. The theatre I was in seemed to agree - people laughed at the right spots, cheered, applauded at the end. It was great.

@Ganymede Eh. Will Smith is actually an impressive dramatic actor, when he's put in a role that calls for it. He's sort of like Jim Carrey in that way - the performance you get out of him really depends on the source material and how much the director is willing to insist that he play the role, and not Will Smith.

If the system has a luck-type stat, have people roll Luck at the beginning of a travel scene - this scene can encompass a day of travel, a week, whatever. Low or high rolls trigger encounters at some point during the scene, and the intensity of that encounter will probably depend on the theme/setting of the game. It doesn't have to be combat or danger! I've had wonderful travel scenes that involved just seeing creatures that the PCs have never seen before, or stumbling into a traveling group of entertainers. Dangerous encounters also don't have to be combat - make use of weather and terrain offer exciting encounters. Mudslides, flooded rivers, snow or thunderstorms, or non-combat dangerous encounters like a stampede or a swarm of tiny insects that can't be beaten with swords.

To me, the trick is to keep encounters balanced between travel disasters and travel opportunities, and that each character gets a chance to shine. 13th Age, which is admittedly more narrative, also suggests a 'travel montage' if there's a lot of travel involved but you just don't want to play it out fully, but you want to have things have happened that give PCs a chance to talk about and develop relationships from it. Basically, it starts out with the DM narrating the travel, and mentioning an obstacle, then picking a PC and saying that they solved it, and asking the player how. No rolls required. Then that PC narrates the next obstacle the party ran into, and calls out another PC as being the 'hero' that time, and so forth. Until everyone has a chance to have solved an obstacle, and the party has some fun noodle stories to bond over.

@Thenomain The new version of CTL makes spending time in the Hedge a lot easier for non-Changelings, so that's entirely possible.

@Cobaltasaurus I would say Discord might be better?

I am very interested in writing encouragement and buddiness. I have so many unfinished projects.

@arkandel Xenoblade Chronicles 2 is a huge action JRPG. If you like JRPGs, it's a great example of the kind, and has a lot to do. Tales of Vesperia is also a JRPG, and should be coming out this week.

@surreality That would be amaaaaaazing. Now I'm actually kinda tempted, because it DOES sound like a fun premise.

Oh this sounds fun!

• I enjoy cooking quite a lot, but hate cleaning, and always cook Too Much Food.
• I am from the Southeastern US, but am a freak with no accent. This has prompted even my fellow Southern natives to claim that I must be lying about where I was born.
• However, "y'all" remains the best and most useful plural.
• I love to read, especially fantasy and SF - latest thing that I read that I really, really was into was the Machineries of Empire trilogy (starts with Ninefox Gambit).
• I also love video games - which has cut into my reading time, as it's far easier to fire up Skyrim and trance out for a few hours than it is to find a book in the house that I haven't already read.
• I have sordid addictions to paranormal romance novels and cooking shows. If you managed to write a romance series about competing chefs in a fantasy world who fall in love, I would buy every copy.
• My favorite color is green, particularly greens with elements of blues.

@faraday is right - MU* logs make /really bad/ stories, much like transcripts of tabletop games do. (And yes, livestreaming has some success, but largely on the strength of the charisma and charm of the players and GMs.) The rhythm, pacing, and characterization is all wrong, you have different writing styles mixed up, the plots beats don't tend to follow a clear narrative arc...it's very bad fiction. It's a lot of fun as improv, but it's not good fiction.

The persistent environment, and the opportunity (however rarely realized) to see character actions and choices create lasting and thoughtful changes in the environment over time. The potential for that is really what keeps me coming back.

@saosmash said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

I do think the github is probably the best place for actual constructive feedback. A lot of the discussions on the systems discussion board are half-assed at best, and many of the suggestions on it are ...

is there a constructive way to say dumb?

Maybe, "not designed for the kind of game Arx is/wants to be". I don't want to be unfair to people who have ideas that are not my ideas, but sometimes I do see suggestions get floated where it's like... I think you are just playing a different game than this one in your head. I D K.

This is always my fear, honestly. I try to couch what suggestions I make in terms of my personal preferences and viewpoint, with an understanding that it may or may not fit in with the design goals of the overall game, but it can be hard once you get enthusiastic about some bit of system nonsense that no one but you cares about (but suddenly you find that you care an unexpected amount).

@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.

@sparks I agree! Which is why I suggest being able to make significant mods to how people are seen by orgs (affection and respect), somehow. Or something like having their own version of Favor/Disfavor to bestow which boosts org or personal power. Like, if people who have the buzz are all talking about a particular org, that org rises in prominence/power if it's good talk, and has to struggle if it's bad talk.

Unfortunately, there just aren't a lot of actual social systems on Arx to give social characters as their domain - we don't (yet) have big NPC factions to manipulate, there's no social conflict dynamics where social characters could shine, and all the systems which exist have slowly turned towards producing silver and resources in ways that, unfortunately, create some serious distortions around wealth and the expectations thereof.

So, I guess I'd turn it around and say, when you say you want social characters to have meaningful systems to interact with, what sorts of systems do you envision as "meaningful" in the context of the sort of game staff wants Arx to be? Like, if you didn't have to code anything, and could just wave your hand and declare, "This is what social power MEANS in this setting," then what would it be?

@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).

@jibberthehut said in Constructive (keyword) Criticism of Arx Systems:

@jeshin cane was 300k of grayson money, 348k of my own. I have blown probably a good almost 2.5 million on the project with about 425k coming from pc houses.

You haven't built an Amber Room, yet, so I don't think there's anything excessive in that or the prestige gained from it. ( The Amber Room at its height before its destruction would have been valued, roughly, like 124 million modern dollars. Great Houses should spend lots of money on beautiful, useless things! It's their job! https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/a-brief-history-of-the-amber-room-160940121/#bCX1mj3uTlrvtfjm.99)

@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.

@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).