Posts made by Pyrephox

@kitteh As I understand, Prestige will be reset when the social system goes in, based on org strength and social skills, so that list may look /very/ different when that happens.

But, honestly, I don't disagree, and I do think that at some point, Arx is going to need a character reset or XP wipe or /something/. By the time the final systems go in, if not before. Both to really push back against the massive XP that has been accrued by characters (including my own), but also so that people can rebuild their characters with the final systems created, instead of having to try and pivot builds as new systems come in, something that can really hurt new characters who come in at the wrong times.

Holy shit. Hooray!

@bored I do think that games could be better about this. Higher ranks, across the board, tend to just have /more/ IC resources to throw at problems, without any downside. Now, in the IC world, people of high ranks should have a lot of their time, energy, and resources tied up in maintaining their position, dealing with whatever infrastructrure they're in charge of, and have a lot more eyes on them, watching for any sign of failure, weakness, or inability. And in a classist society, there are always major shibboleths of 'upper class' which must be maintained, and those of 'lower class' which must be avoided (in public - in private, of course, most people don't care) if you want to be taken seriously as a member of the upper class.

But, in the reality of play, none of that matters. You have just as much time as any other player to do anything that you want, and the playerbase by and large isn't going to enforce any IC consequences for acting 'ignoble', and there simply aren't enough hours in the day for staff on any game to enact consequences for 'good' or 'bad' cultural behavior as often as they need to be enacted. You have to rely on PCs to keep each other in theme, and that...rarely really happens. Instead, players largely choose their reaction to events based on their own, personal values, and their relationships with other players - people who we enjoy playing with usually get a lot more slack and defense, no matter the IC action, and people who we find tedious or annoying OOC get jumped on relentlessly for every mistake or poor decision.

And I'm just as guilty of it as anyone, really. I try to recognize it and take a step back when it happens, but it's very easy to get caught up in a hate fest on a character where everyone's high-fiving and validating each other and bonding over sick burns, especially if the player is someone you're already not fond of.

@packrat said in The limits of IC/OOC responsibility:

Give the example that @bored gave about Star Crusade earlier in the thread this is something I have been thinking about a lot for any new Fading Suns game, also keep in mind stuff that I observed on Arx.

To start with I am looking at having a much flatter structure for feudal/whatever power holders. On Arx a baron gets pretty much the same ways to interact with the economy/systems as a duke but with smaller numbers, all dukes report to a head of house whilst having marquis level nobles reporting to them, etc. This is both not very interesting and pretty weird if trying to emulate any kind of actual feudal hierarchy and its snakepit messiness. Playing a duke I ran into a fair bit of griping from say, counts about how poor and unimportant they were, let alone barons. Anyone not a landed noble was basically not on the scale at all outside of the head of church guy, who was an NPC who then politically shot the faction in the head before being replaced.

Although I like the ideas you've brought up, I'm going to quibble with this characterization - and that's speaking as the player of the PC who was one of the ones leading the charge to replace the NPC. The PCs playing the heads of the great houses mostly voted to commit human sacrifice, in an /extremely public setting/, and in return, the NPC excommunicated them, since the religion in question is unambigiously against human sacrifice. This wasn't 'shooting the faction in the head' it was IC actions leading to IC consequences. Did the NPC do it, in part, to further his own political ambitions? Absolutely. Was the human sacrificed justified? Most likely. But if the heads of several Catholic nations all got together and decided to sacrifice people to Satan on public TV, the Pope is gonna excommunicate them, no matter that they claim that the public sacrifice is necessary to avert the apocalypse.

What actually led to the fantasy Pope being replaced was the possible murder of a High Lady, which never went to trial due to Sudden And Mysterious Disappearance.

While it was a bit frustrating in the moment to have your head NPC seem to be determined to turn the entire PC population against you, once I sat back and thought about it, it led to fun RP and it reinforced the theme and the consequences that SHOULD be involved in things like...publicly deciding to sacrifice human beings because of magical things no one outside the PCs actually believe in.

Which is, coming back to the topic, also a part of leadership play that NPCs are better for than PCs. It /sucks/ to be the PC everyone loves to hate because you're having your character enforce the less cuddly parts of theme, or telling someone that no, your character is never going to approve of what they see as an insult to the org they're leading, no matter /how/ popular the character (or player) doing the insult is. NPCs don't necessarily need to give a crap about the fact that PCs are always going to interpret things through a very 'PCs are the center of the world and the exception to every rule' lens. (And I'm even in /favor/ of that lens, within reason.)

Regarding 'ranked' positions, I think it depends on the IC nature of the organization and what the PCs' places are within it. Something like the leader of a pack, or other small personal organization almost requires someone who is OOC at least /okay/ with doing some significant personality management. On the other hand, a large IC organization with many, many NPCs is different - the PCs should presumably have enough autonomy and NPC oversight to not need an IC leader who sits down with each one of them and walks them through everything. While I might expect a head of a family to explain their plans over dinner, I would not expect a megacorp CEO to drop by each of their employees' houses to get their personal feedback on where they plan to take the business. Note, this only works if the PC leader isn't trying to micromanage - if you're going to expect PCs to fend for themselves within the org, then give them the freedom to do so, and only step in when they're going against the purpose/goals of the org in a measurable way.

Taking on a dependent is a similar case, but on a smaller scale, I think it's the OOC responsibility of both players to discuss what this relationship entails in terms of IC commitment. And be honest! Also, my general feeling is that any relationship like this should have an 'escape hatch' right from the start, mutually agreed on, if it doesn't work out, or if one player goes suddenly idle or something, in a way that doesn't ruin either of the characters. The above also applies, ideally, for IC relationships of a lot of different types.

I don't think any RP position should reach the point of needing to be a second job, full or part time, in order to be seen as 'doing a good job'. I feel like some times people demand too much of others in those positions and forget that the other person is a player, trying to have fun, and not just a dispenser of things your PC needs/wants. If you're wanting/needing something from another PC, take a moment and think about what you are doing to make your needs actively fun for the PC's player.

@auspice Yeah. I love weather code. If I'm setting a scene, I like to use weather code to add atmosphere and flavor to it - I /like/ a scene that's randomly raining, or snowing, or beautifully sunny and swelteringly hot. It really does add to gameplay, at least for me.

A small but excellent one: pose/history on Arx. If your connection gets dropped, when you relog, all you have to do is hit +pose/history and you get the last few poses in the room since you posed. No one has to page you what you missed, or halt the scene to try to figure out what you did or didn't see. It is wonderful.

Okay, so here is where people are getting confused about whether you're advocating for all -isms to never be brought up in games:

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

Here's the thing: Why is it hurtful to suggest that it's hurtful to use that kind of language and bring those situations into play? Why is calling a gay player's gay character a fag okay, but saying 'I have to wonder why you want the right to call somebody a fag' not okay?

Because right there? It looks an /awful/ lot like you're doing just that, and suggesting that the players themselves are hurting other players by wanting to play a fictional character who may express certain real world bigotries.

Also, I think it's time that we consider the other side of it, as well, in that every player is (probably) an adult who is presumably capable of making their own decisions, and not being forced to log into any particular game. Which means, really, that if you as a person are deeply wounded by a fictional character using a slur, then there's some responsibility to curate your own experiences, and either making it clear OOC that you're not interested in that sort of play experience, or choosing to not join, or to leave, games with settings that allow that.

I like Arx; it's a second world fantasy game that has chosen to make a very egalitarian society, and that's a lot of fun to play. But if Arx was a game set in Meiji-era Japan, even Meiji-era Japan with magic, then I would want and expect to see some level of the cultural inequalities that existed then as play elements. If someone played a burakumin, then I'd damned well expect to see them struggle with ostracism and bigotry (within reason that allowed them to still participate in the game) and the changing nature of their social status, and if I were playing someone who wasn't a member of that caste or defined by being 'progressive', I would absolutely portray my character having those bigoted stances, even though it's remotely possible that someone else on the game OOCly could be a member of that society. Because that's the setting of the game, and it's an interesting conflict. I wouldn't make it 'the defining trait' of my character, because outside of certain media, bigotry rarely IS the defining trait of someone's character - it's a distressing and unsightly extra, like a prominent, hairy mole that draws your eye to it at the worst possible times.

And it's fun to play characters who have a couple of those, especially when they tie directly into making a setting not just like the everyday world, and a character not just you in funny dress.

@caryatid said in Characters You Enjoyed Playing:

@pyrephox Aww, Thomas.

He's still the sneaky, broken yardstick I measure all other Changeling characters against.

He was very fun to play with, and I loved seeing how he bounced off of all the other great characters on Darkwater. While he never really accomplished anything, there were too many great personal conflicts and interactions to name.

Thomas Truesdale.

Still one of the characters who had the most going on under the hood, as one might expect from a Changeling. Also one of the first male characters that I played for longer than a one-shot.

He was from an incredibly small town in the back-end of Kansas, wandered into a fae domain, and was turned in so that another Lost could escape. It's possible that he eventually did the same to some other poor bastard - he could never remember how he got out of his durance, and that killed him. Either way, he got spit back out in the same small town, where there were no other Lost and he'd never had a fetch, with next to no memory of where he'd been or why he was a nightmare to his own eyes but /no one else saw anything different/ (except that he'd aged up). It wasn't long until he went completely bugfuck, and got himself involuntarily committed to the state institution.

I didn't want to go with 'hellish asylum', so it was actually the place where he met a Winter Court mentor who was looking out for Lost who got committed. He helped get Thomas' Clarity back up, and with the help of a Duchess of the Icebound Heart, got him capable of interacting with the world and pretending to be human again (then she broke his heart, because of course she did).

What came out the other end of all of that was a /deeply/ broken man who was emotionally manipulative, controlling, and even abusive, while sincerely believing it was For Their Own Good. He wasn't really capable of deep positive emotion, although he could fake it well enough for his day job, and although his dearest wish was for a boring, stable, ordinary life, he was absolutely willing to murder the hell out of someone if they were in his way. If they were Lost. He valued human life much more highly, and he was deeply opposed to magical predation on humans (aside from himself). He was a bundle of curiosity, especially about occult things that didn't come from the Fae - he had this secret dream of figuring out a way to send a bunch of human psychics into the Hedge to burn down everything and take on the Fae with telekinesis and nukes. It never quite worked out, though.

Amusingly, /nothing/ he ever did quite worked out. I'm not sure he accomplished even one of his intended goals the entire time I played him. When he failed, though, he just grabbed what he could from the situation and acted like that was the plan all the while. I would have really loved to have more fun occult adventures with him, or for his position as a reporter to have meant more, but I loved playing him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I want to engage fully with whatever setting I play in, and most settings have some form of elitism, ethnocentrism, or prejudice. So I do consider and often include some of those biases and prejudgments into whatever character I make. I usually try to key them so that they do not involve harassing or encouraging the harassment of other PCs, but I find a certain level of tension to be an enjoyable challenge in PC to PC interactions which can otherwise be bland.

For example, I currently play on Arx. Theme files suggest that there is prejudice not based on sexuality or ethnicity, but on culture. So, my character is notably biased against 'shavs' and Prodigals on a cultural level, viewing them as barbarians in need of civilization. That said, he can interact quite pleasantly with individual Prodigals, so long as they don't say anything crazy like suggesting shavs are cultural equals or superiors of the Compact, and he doesn't approve of wholesale slaughter (although he's fine with driving them off land that 'rightfully' belongs to members of the Compact, if they won't bend the knee, and killing the ones who refuse to go). He likewise looks down on practitioners of shamanism, atheist characters, and nobles who like to act like commoners and don't abide by the standards of personal honor and behavior set by the main culture.

He has a lot of people who he looks vaguely down on, is what I'm saying. And sometimes it's hard, and he can get cut out of stuff because of his IC snippiness about 'those sorts' (whichever group of 'those' he's complaining about today), which I consider a reasonable consequence for his views. Even if, OOC, I find it a little frustrating that so many PCs hold very modern opinions in defiance of the setting, since the setting is really what I'm trying to play, warts and all.

In general, I'm more comfortable with playing fantasy prejudices than real world ones. I don't really want to play a racist character, even if I don't think there's anything necessarily /wrong/ with it, as long as OOCly it wasn't making the group uncomfortable. It just wouldn't be fun for me, and I probably wouldn't want to play at a table where someone was hitting that note hard, even if it was totally IC-only. But if you want to play someone who hates elves? Or wizards? Go for it.

I think about the play I want to have on this character, and I usually take into account what I've played in the recent past so that I can mix it up a bit. Also, I look through the mechanics and character-related fluff of the setting, to see what inspires me - this is one of the reasons that generic systems and settings without much uniqueness often frustrate me in character creation, because I get really excited about having a character who engages with a specific part of /this/ setting and /this/ system. My characters are often meant to explore or address a question or a thought I have upon reading the game, while also being built with the intention of being able to 'hit the ground running' for that particular game.

Once I have that, I build with the goal of creating a character who is competent in their specialty, and well-rounded otherwise. I try not to min-max, but I do enjoy when a clever and evocative combination of abilities can be found. I go back and tweak the character's concept to the level of competence that the mechanics are able to convey - if I can't afford to be 'the best' by the stats, then I make sure to adjust the character's expectations of themselves accordingly, unless it's part of their concept to be boastful or overcompensating.

Finally, I try to think of one to three things, based in the setting and game theme, that the character WANTS. Things that I can keep in mind as driving the character, especially in those first few scenes.

@kanye-qwest said in General Video Game Thread:

@pyrephox Well, yes. There are no other remotely interesting romance storylines for a ladychar. (Sorry, Josephine, you're adorable but eh)

Iron Bull is fun, although the potential for Drama doesn't REALLY kick in until the DLC.

@sparks said in General Video Game Thread:

@kanye-qwest said in General Video Game Thread:

@tempest said in General Video Game Thread:

I really enjoyed Inquisition, aside from all of the characters being god awful trash heaps (except Cassandra and the Iron Bull guy).

DEEP BREATH um wow you take that back Varric Tethras is the best Dragon Age companion ever, even if he did get sad between 2 and Inquisition, he is still my fake platonic true love. (also cassandra and iron bull are gr8)

sits here in the "I kind of like Solas, even though he's a lying jackass" corner

It is very hard for me not to romance him every single time I play Inquisition, just because I know how it is going to end, and the conga-line of trauma and betrayal a Solasmancing elf character experiences from the 3/4ths point to the end of the game is just...melodramatic catnip. Also, well intentioned extremists who end up betraying you for A Cause are kinda my fictional type (yes, I romanced Anders, and then stabbed him).

I would really love to see a SF exploration/adventure game set on an alien world with a crashed colony ship. New characters could be thawed out colonists, a meta plot could be discovering ruins, native species, maybe a conspiracy that crashed the ship, but it could also just have a lot of awesome crazy world building and adventure plots.

1.4967 and so forth into numbers unregarded.

@Insomnia A very few!

Although sometimes I feel like I am the only person who genuinely LIKES the Vita. It has great battery life, feels good in my hands, and a much better store/app selection than the DS.

@Insomnia Trails of Cold Steel 2 came out a while ago! For the Vita, at least.