Posts made by Pyrephox

@Coin Woot! Should we ever be on the same game, we'll have to give it a try.

Also, regarding IC incompetence...there's a line, too. A character that does a stupid thing is great. A character that continually does nothing but stupid things (especially if they do so in a way that wrenches the scene's focus from whatever it was to mememememe) is less great. Likewise, a character that violates the assumed competence of a particular setting or game (in either direction! Unflappable Marines with perfect combat skills are disruptive in a scene about the Scooby Gang investigating a haunted house. But, likewise, Shaggy isn't appropriate for a Delta Green plot.)

I think, in general, a lot of people just have trouble with figuring out where the lines are for various things.

The only thing worse (and less likely) for the average gamer than running away is surrendering to be captured. It's very, very hard to get them to do either of those things, unless it's their idea.

The scene I MOST always wanted to have is a very specific one. I had a character who had a friend. They were both Lost, and therefore crazy, and the friend descended into paranoid delusions that included peppering my character's apartment with crime scene photos of his dead girlfriend before he went into hiding. We talked, OOC, about my character tracking him down and having the most epic and pathetic crazy slapfight ever -- because we were both thinky-type characters, and had absolute crap for combat rolls. Sadly, it never happened.

More generally, though, I've always, always wanted an enemies/rivals to reluctant-and-snarky friends storyline, with all the scenes involved in that. Ideally, it would include at least one unsuccessful murder attempt on each side, and then either the old-fashioned trope of getting stuck in a situation they can't get out of without working together, or just finding someone else they both hate so much that they bond over it.

I would damn near pay money for this storyline with two characters that had real chemistry.

@skew said:

@Pyrephox said:

@tragedyjones said:

@Pyrephox Unlike a standard CofD game like Vampire or Mage, it shouldn't really matter if a group is entirely absent. The PC cooperatives are at best mildly antagonistic

Good to know!

I'm actually imagining some of the pre-made groups might not get any love at all. If that's the case, I think the best course will be to have NPCs in the organization, and have it "ran" by staff. In the case that they become relevant to IC events, there's a place for people to go to ask questions. Likewise, if a player (or play group) comes along and wants to pick something up, there will be some continuity and flow. And, why bother having groups that might not see any action? I believe some of these groups will help create a more fleshed out, realistic game setting. "This type of hunter would exist, logically, even if no one wants to play them." Something like that.

I'm also expecting a lot of players to go it alone, or make their own groups, which we'll certainly allow.

I'm glad that you guys are thinking about it. I like the idea of a focus on smaller, more personal groups. Although it does run into the pack/motley/coterie problem where you can join a small group...where then the others stop logging in, get bored with their characters, go loony tunes, or whatever, and now you've got this theoretically binding commitment to a group that just doesn't exist in a real sense, anymore. If the staff is committed to providing continuity, at least for the staff-created groups, that should help, though!

@tragedyjones said:

@Pyrephox Unlike a standard CofD game like Vampire or Mage, it shouldn't really matter if a group is entirely absent. The PC cooperatives are at best mildly antagonistic

Good to know!

@tragedyjones said:

Next question: How many pre-generated player factions do you guys think is a good number? To date, we have 6, with ideas for a seventh.

I'd say no more than that. The problem with too many factions is that each one ends up not being well populated. Or (as tends to happen) one or another has a charismatic, active person who Starts Things and so people chase the action. And you end up with Faction 1 having fifteen people, and all the others having maaaybe one or two.

Which, admittedly, is only an issue if you're planning to have PvP between factions or a lot of faction-locked content.

@EmmahSue said:

I'd join in gloating more if I could actually win a damn game.

ES

I won my first game...by accident. Silly person went and mutual-killed the King when I'd just stolen some prestige from everyone.

This game is delightful.

@ThatGuyThere Oh gosh, yes. That is one of my biggest peeves in all of MU*dom.

@Coin said:

@Pyrephox said:

@Coin Yeah, staff would have to be willing to define what an acceptable background was, and give examples for both backgrounds and One Unique Things. It shouldn't be as much of an issue for a D&D game as for, say, the way people play WoD/CoD in MU*s, since ideally it SHOULDN'T be PvP-focus, and PvP tends to be where the most arguments about that kind of flexibility come in.

Yeah. But you'll still get the occasional person who will complain that someone else's Background allows them to do "everything mine does and more". People's One Unique Thing would also be tricky because to keep the actual feel, you would need an ever growing list of unique things that can't be repeated.

You will get the occasional person who will complain about everything. Any version of D&D you run is going to have something that can potentially create an exploit of the rules. That's presumably why staff aren't robots, and it's not impossible to pull someone in even after approval and tell them to Knock That Crap Off.

@Coin Yeah, staff would have to be willing to define what an acceptable background was, and give examples for both backgrounds and One Unique Things. It shouldn't be as much of an issue for a D&D game as for, say, the way people play WoD/CoD in MU*s, since ideally it SHOULDN'T be PvP-focus, and PvP tends to be where the most arguments about that kind of flexibility come in.

You might want to consider something like 13th Age as a system. It's meant to be gridless and high fantasy, with a couple of "story game" elements that could be a lot of fun.

Although, most especially - don't design a game by committee. If you're not passionate about running THIS GAME then it won't work well, no matter how many people the individual elements please.

I enjoy the previews!

@Apos said:

@Pyrephox I think that stretches what a lot of players would consider public. That's trying to RP a scene in a remote or inaccessible setting to make it unlikely or impossible for other characters to randomly happen upon it. That would make it more logical to be done in a temproom on sandboxes or a locked/inaccessible room in non-sandboxes.

Eh, I'm not a big fan of interrupting a scene that's flowing well to go to an entirely different on-grid room for an interaction that may not take up more than a few minutes of "screen time" or that might have happened unexpectedly. It just doesn't seem rude to me to be able to say, "Can you give us a moment to finish up this bit before entering?" Or even, "We'd rather not add another to this scene," even if it's in a public room.

Now, if that's happening all the time, that's one thing. But most of the time, if someone says, "Hey, not now," I don't assume it's about me, or excluding me, but rather that the scene just doesn't fit having my character there at that moment, even if it's technically a place where they COULD go.

@Arkandel said:

@faraday said:

@Arkandel said:

But it is. I mean it's still considerate to ask before joining but if you're in an actual public place - I'm not talking the back room of a bookstore but a busy restaurant or something - then being annoyed if someone walks in is unreasonable.

Being annoyed if they walk in is unreasonable, but so is being annoyed if you walk in, ask to join and they tell you 'no'.

But that's what I'm saying, it depends on the context.

For starters and before I say anything else, I'm not staying for a scene where I'm not wanted. That'd be ... well, it wouldn't happen.

Otherwise if the scene is about people talking on their own then yes, trying to butt in - especially if they're not particularly welcoming, let alone actively adverse to the idea - is a douche move. But if it's about something else that specifically draws attention and invites intervention fuck that. If my character pulls a gun in a downtown restaurant at lunch time I don't get to tell people they can't be there because they might call the cops or try to stop him and that 'ruins it for me'. It's not cool.

If the setting is some seedy watering hole in a bad part of town at 1 am then there's argument to be made.

It's all context dependent.

That said, there's also the phenomenon of people jumping into a scene because Something's Going On, and immediately bogging it down. If, for example, a character is pinning another character to an alleyway by their neck in an argument, there is no real reason for there suddenly be 5 extra characters who appear out of nowhere or were "there are along" and now they want to break out all their combat dice, and call in all the PC cops, and so on and so forth. The PCs originally involved should absolutely be able to say, "we'd prefer not to be ICly interrupted until this is resolved."

@faraday said:

@Arkandel said:

But it is. I mean it's still considerate to ask before joining but if you're in an actual public place - I'm not talking the back room of a bookstore but a busy restaurant or something - then being annoyed if someone walks in is unreasonable.

Being annoyed is unreasonable, but so is being annoyed if you ask to join and they tell you 'no'.

If you're having a nice private conversation at a bar table in a public room and someone else walks into the bar, I don't feel that you're obligated to include them. It's nice if you can, but sometimes it doesn't work. Sometimes your character is crying in their beer or talking about Something Serious or Something Secret and it just doesn't make sense for them to start chatting up some random person who walked in. I don't feel it appropriate to tell the original people: "go find someplace other than the bar to RP your bar scene".

Now if that happened, I would politely and apologetically explain to the newcomer why I can't work them in, and do my best to make it up to them next time.

Yeah. As much as I like being inclusive (and I do - I try to make it a policy to play with lots of different people, because I enjoy the variety in interactions), sometimes a scene - not necessarily intentionally - has turned to something where it's very awkward to shoehorn another person in. And you can't necessarily predict what that scene is at the beginning.

I can remember once scene, in a public room, I was in where it started as a standard sort of 'run into you' scene between my character and another. It grew tense and confrontational, although not obviously antagonistic in a way that would draw public attention. A new character entered, posed walking up to the two and just saying hi. My character's next pose only acknowledged that in a terse nod, because most of his attention was focused on this very tense interaction. The player then had their character walk off in a huff because they weren't instantly included.

There was just no way to DO that in that moment that matched both the scene and the personalities involved. And 'take it to RP rooms' doesn't really help when the scene wasn't planned to be tense or private, but just...turned that way.

@Misadventure said:

I felt like the Off Screen System used at where ever (RfK?) gave every vampire a way to be worth interacting with, either as a potential ally or enemy.

Anyone else get that impression?

Absolutely. Heck, it even gave ghouls and regular humans things to do. In part, I think, not necessarily because This System Is The Best, but because it gave actual explicit rules for what effects people could have, and what they could and could not do to achieve that effect. It also gave other avenues for antagonism than simply combat or direct confrontation, which helped to build what the game was going for - that political feel.

Which is, again, about communicating the expectations of the game to players. A lot of times, I've found, MU*s have a lot of unwritten rules about what you can and can't do. If you're in-touch with the game culture, you feel welcome. If you're not, then you can risk continually running up against those unwritten mores, and then, yeah, you feel feel less welcome.

@Thenomain said:

@Pyrephox said:

@Thenomain said:

I need a place to find people who look more like normal people, not like actors and models. Like, "young but androgynous, very homely fae probably male but not for certain". Or, "overweight middle-aged albino white woman".

I search Google images with the key characteristics of a character in mind

Have you tried "middle-aged albino woman"? I'd rather have no image than the wrong one, though once I put down on the wiki page "no she doesn't look this beautiful but let's face it, you picked a hot played-by too".

Nah. My characters usually aren't that exotic in appearance, so there's more selection available.

@Thenomain said:

I need a place to find people who look more like normal people, not like actors and models. Like, "young but androgynous, very homely fae probably male but not for certain". Or, "overweight middle-aged albino white woman".

I search Google images with the key characteristics of a character in mind, if I don't already have an idea. So, "young white man dark hair" or "muscular woman shaved head tattoos", for example. There's a LOT of cruft, but I can often find something that approximates the look I'm going for without being an actor or model.

@Miss-Demeanor said:

"Theme normalization" makes it sound like its supposed to happen, or is a good thing. I think its more of a hijacking or kidnapping than anything. Its a conscious effort put forth, generally by a group of compatriots with a like-minded goal, who will not hesitate to make life miserable for everyone if they don't get their way.

From another angle, is it a good game if it's demanding an experience that players don't actually want? In my experience, it ISN'T a single group of unified people who are actively running off all the silent masses who want to play the game The Way It Should Be Played. Rather, it's the simple fact that people aren't as devoted to playing within a given theme as they might say they are. A lot of people say "Oh god, Winnie the Pooh bars in the Hedge - it's the WORLD OF DARKNESS"...while, at the same time, they're totally running their Victorian tea houses, or playing Biker King of the Wastes.

When it comes down to it, quite a lot of people want to play something that's fun, has an element of wish fulfillment (wish fulfillment about being an over-sexed, druggie biker who turns into a ragewolf without having to worry about cops or consequences is as much wish fulfillment as the pretty sparkle princess with her true love) or power fantasy, and is easy enough to get into that you can go from contemplating to playing within a day or two.

While I would like to see more games with a stronger theme, I don't think that the theme drifters are actively setting out to "ruin" a game, and I don't think they're a unified crew of saboteurs - they're just players. Playing what they consider to be fun. I feel like, if you want a stronger adherence to theme among the playerbase, you have to show the players WHY and HOW playing to the theme you're hoping for is going to be fun for them.

It might be worth considering what is meant by "enforce", as well.

Setting a strong SENSE of theme is a good start. But telling people who you've approved that they're "playing it wrong" is unlikely to lead to a better game culture and happy players. I'd argue that we should be finding the RP and characters who best exemplify whatever theme we're going for, and reinforcing that positively. If, for example, you're running a zombie apocalypse game, publicly give bonus XP to posted scenes that, for example, have a group of survivors killing and eating one of their own because they're starving. Publicly praise the player who has their PC die in a zombie attack, or do Something Stupid that imperils the community because they're starving or crazy.