Posts made by Reason

@faraday said in Games:

I mean, you can put in the + or @ if you want. Ares doesn't care. @desc, +desc and just desc are all the same command.

Sure. And no doubt that's configurable under the hood somewhere.

Old habits die hard. When I discovered that Evennia was similarly clipping my special characters, I had to drop everything to go find the damn config file responsible for removing those leading characters from the command parser and disable that feature.

Wouldn't want @desc to get mixed up with +desc or desc, afterall!

@seraphim73 said in Games:

@reason Just wanted to note that most games that run on Ares //do// have a grid. No, you can't walk it from the web portal (unless you use the integrated client), but you can certainly walk it from your client. Can't help you with the slew of arcane commands that start with @ and + -- when I first started with Ares I typed them by pure muscle memory, and it's taken me a couple of years to not type them instinctively.

Ahhh. Cool. As I said, I haven't scratched too deeply at Ares games. It's mostly been impressed on me that Ares allows for A) easy to ship a game concept, B) web-based asynchronous, gridless gameplay. (I don't think I've actually played on a MUSH since, like, 2008).

To be fair, I don't have strong negative feelings one way or the other from a playability standpoint. I'm somewhat ambivalent there. My issue is more focused on coder side of the equation, and having preferences in that regard that lie elsewhere.

-r

@shaggy said in Games:

All the new games are Ares.
Am I the only one who just doesn't really care for Ares?

I like the concept of Ares -- something that modernizes the genre and improve the accessibility to natively incorporate the web is a step in the right direction. The fact that it's so thoughtfully supported is kind of like winning the lottery for folks that it's a good fit for.

That said, I'm not a huge fan of Ruby and for the VERY LITTLE poking around I've done, the games running it haven't fully grabbed me. My MU* lizard brain still craves a grid of some sort, I think. And a slew of arcane commands that start with @ symbols or + signs.

I dig the ability to elegantly emulate the play-by-post experience, though, and hacking something like that into Evennia some day might be neat.

-r

@friarzen said in FFG L5R:

The first thing that comes to mind would be a major Shadowlands power rising that needs to be handled diplomatically rather than via the usual Crab show of force (think a new, sudden Fae Kingdom or some such that has made Alliance overtures with the Imperial Throne to help them fight some OTHER threat from the Shadowlands).

Interesting -- what kind of latitude exists in the setting for the emergence of such a kingdom and what sourcebook includes the grounding theme and details?

-r

@jennkryst

Okay. I'll thumb through it and take a peak.

Meanwhile, I took a break from fiddling back/forth between CP:Red and Shadowrun 5th edition, and built up a functioning +info subsystem on Evennia to be used for a (yet to be coded) L5R game.

Nothing fancy, literally just an implementation of +info that allows you to grab basically verbatim write-ups on Clans, Families, and Schools/Roles right now. -HOWEVER-, two nice points:

1. It's all loosely coupled under the hood so the same thing driving this +info system could also support a somewhat more ambitious set of interactions (e.g. Character Generation).

2. I'm building it in such a way that someone could do a vanilla install of Evennia, then download this, and make a couple of configuration modifications, and "inherit" L5R code into their vanilla install. So maybe if someone out there felt ambitious (and this actually goes somewhere) someone can spin themselves up a game.

-r

@jennkryst said in FFG L5R:

All our XP calculations are wrong, we overlooked step 13. We're doomed. Doomed!

Ha.

Emerald Empire has the Imperial Families, their schools, and then some monk orders. So that's probably a must for the game, on top of the core.

Interesting -- including Imperial Family PCs sounds risky.

@bored said in FFG L5R:

I'm definitely not voting, just trying to give feedback and ideas. I stick by the opinion that Crab lands work well as a newbie area (to a point: the deeper Shadowlands are very much not). Fighting goblins is a mainstay rank 1 action activity, and the less precarious social environment is a good warmup.

Your feedback and ideas are well received and appreciated. I think having concrete activities that involve a little violence is probably a good release valve for otherwise heavily social activities.

The difficulty of picking a static setting that appeals to everyone is another MU/tabletop split. I'd argue the tabletop game is not designed with a stable setting in mind (outside the box set campaigns), foremost because it assumes characters of mixed clans.

I tend to agree with this assessment as a general challenge of MU*s vs. TTs -- there's a point where the players eventually get restless and start burning the grid down as the mystery and excitement of the backdrop starts to become mundane and well-worn.

For more neutral options, I'll go back to suggesting book stuff because they're bursting with ideas. Zakyo Toshi, also in Strongholds, is effectively a neutral Ryoko Owari-lite in minor clan lands, at least before the Scorpion annex it. Naishou Province is a single-book campaign setting from 4e. It's not as detailed as the box sets, but it's well designed to work as a sandbox, neutral lands under Imperial authority (the book doesn't actually give it a canon location for the sake of letting a GM work it into any game, although the described history and geography makes the foothills of the mountains between the Dragon & Phoenix a good candidate, above the Lion plains and Toshi Ranbo).

I'll take a peak. I'm also trying to research and understand what might cause the annexation of a holding by Imperial decry as a means of forcing some mixing of clans, factions, and political intrigues -- or if such a thing is even possible in the setting.

@songtress said in FFG L5R:

I would actually like to see the Capital / Imperial city, more Heian-Kyo vibes.

I don't enjoy being near the Wall, or the Crablands.(but that's me).

I am Crane/Unicorn style girl, so wild open plains for my horsey, and tea houses, Kabuki and all ikebana shops.

What is it about proximity to the wall that you don't enjoy? Too grimdark?

-r

@bored said in FFG L5R:

Conversely, I think if you just gave people XP... you'd see much more min-maxed results, even if they were more 'XP equivalent.' Everyone would max their chosen MA, Fitness, Theology, Courtesy, and perhaps a few others based on their character/build. They wouldn't end up reflecting their clans and families, which is important in L5R. It's part of the setting: characters strongly reflect their heritage, and breaking with tradition is rare and a big deal.

Right. Makes sense. In theory, I think there's value in having some notion of XP parity on characters exiting CharGen, but the difference seemed small enough not to raise too much ire -- and to your point, there's the risk of introducing unintended consequences to a system working-as-intended.

Honestly, the CG system elegantly forcing clear line of sight on character background, motivations, etc.., is something I really like! It feels like you don't leave CG as a pile of cookie-cutter stats (as many RPGs tend to promote), but a coherent character view that happens to have stats that reflect that view.

@Reason I think from all of this it should be obvious the game is a passion hobby of mine. I'd absolutely play a game using either recent system.

Hey, just thought I'd ask. Sometimes we can be very knowledgeable and passionate about something, even as we're at a point where we'd like some distance from it.

So... In that case, let me pick your brain. Razor of the Dawn Castle in the Crab lands seems to be well situated for a game setting -- it has the Shadowlands to the South West, the haunted Shinomen Forest to the North, and the Plains above Evil to the west. The atmospheric elements of that seem to have an opportunity to draw a lot of interesting elements. Additionally, from what little theme I could gather it's historically a primarily a reservist castle though Samurai from other clans looking to make a name for themselves might find themselves stationed there (still safely far away from more central Crab holdings).

The above constitutes a good mix of Horror/Adventure opportunities, but I'm not sure that's enough for a game.

How might you weave in a consistent Intrigue/Social aspect against that backdrop? What kind of thematically reasonable explanation could a more multi-clan court-like setting emerge against that sort of a backdrop?

-r

@jennkryst Hrm. Yeah. Though...

...that doesn't sound insurmountable, it just sounds like a few flat files with some tables (or some JSON, if you're feeling cute) and a little code that queries down to the applicable stat/choice... And L5R is lucky in that the process of Chargen is fairly linear, without massive branching.

...it actually feels somewhat doable. I think the hardest part is just building the database of things -- that's likely a lot of cutting/pasting.

I could almost see it as a straight forward menu system that you drove through sequentially (perhaps in part because the 20 questions used for CharGen are themselves a sequential vehicle).

Hrmmmmm...

@bored said in FFG L5R:

re: the MU, I could get into it in a lot of detail that expands on ideas about what make MU's succeed in general, as I don't think it was any particular major thing. I was the only staffer, and it was a small playerbase, many of whom didn't know L5R, so I was teaching people through chargen and in every scene. That meant people weren't so confident to drive RP on their own. There's issues with the rigidity of Rokugani culture vs. player norms: while we had tea and sake houses, but 'bar RP' is trickier when the samurai ideal is polite emotional control. And then there's big stuff. L5R's themes are about honor and loyalty, and samurai willing to die for those things without hesitation. But MUers are risk-adverse. I created some incentives, XP refunds/ bonus XP for rerolling after a 'good samurai death.' Even had one taker, where a Battle Maiden suicide charged an oni on the Wall. That's the kind of story L5R wants to tell, but not that many players will go for it, and the game can fall pretty flat if people don't buy into those big ideas. And without those, as your average social, simulator it's going to be too stuffy for most.

Fair. Honestly, just being the only staffer is a fairly tremendous burden. And I agree with your assessment of MU* players generally being risk adverse, in part because we often associate a character completing their arc as 'losing' -- that's an unfortunate association to have. Some of my most memorable characters are memorable in part because of how they died (sometimes at the hands of other players during non-consensual PvP!). I've often pondered how to break down that association, and ease players from one story arc to the next -- without derailing this thread, I generally think stagnant, non-rotating casts of characters is usually an unhealthy sign.

Thanks for sharing. Would you ever play on an L5R MU* again, given a chance?

-r

@jennkryst said in FFG L5R:

@reason ... THIS CHANGES EVERYTHING (okay not really)...

Ha!

Skills have a max spread of 8 XP for Bushi and Courtiers (16 XP for eight 1's vs 24 XP for 3/2/1/1/1), and 8 XP for Shugenja (12 XP for 1/1/1/1/1/1 vs 20 XP for 3/2/1)...

Yeah, so you were right. Max spread of 14(6+8)XP. I suspect in practice it will be more likely a bit less pronounced, as I suspect most players will bias towards having a couple of skills rated 2 (or more) -- were I to guess, the most common distribution would be having a 3/1 between two skills, or a 2/2. Which is like a 2XP difference.

So I'm guessing min-maxing probably nets you +5XP most often (+3 XP for rings, +2XP for skills). That's small enough that disturbing the system may not be warranted, though also small enough that giving a modest boost to non-min/maxed characters doesn't break anything either -- that's a GOOD place to be for a CharGen system.

So... I suppose the REAL question is... why aren't we coding one up right now?

-r

@jennkryst Let's see...

+1 Ring for Clan, +1 Ring for Family, +1 to 2x Rings for Role/School, and then +1 Ring for "Step 4: How does your character Stand out within their School? (pg. 88, core)". So that ultimately works out to distributing 5x +1s throughout your rings.

So I think that gives you a 3/3/2/1/1 as the most polarized build, and either 3/2/2/2/1 or 2/2/2/2/2 as more balanced builds, with the polarized build having a net +3XP advantage over the former, and a net +6XP advantage over the latter.

Double check me, though.

As far as sufficient variety -- okay. Cool. I've skimmed content, I need to sit down and read it all now I suppose.

-r

@jennkryst Yeah, it certainly isn't nothing. It's about 7.5% of the way to accessing Rank 6 of a role. That's a wide enough margin to be a bit annoyed, though agree that it's not so wide as to be worried.

For some reason it's less about skills stacking up that rubs me wrong, and more about 3/3/2/1/1 Ring Distribution vs. 3/2/2/2/1 distribution (assuming I've run through CG correctly to arrive at those possible distributions), which I believe nets +6XP for being lopsided with a pair of 3s vs. more well rounded w/ more 2s. In my mind, a simple fix to something like that could just be to house rule that if you take a 3/2/2/2/1 distribution you have some benefit (which could just be the net XP difference, or a +1 raise to your lowest ring, or something like that).

On the flip side, I don't really know enough about the system to figure out if it warrants tinkering. Maybe it's fine.

Is the core book good enough for a game to be based on from a role/technique standpoint? Or do you need to bring in the other roles from the source books to get adequately rounded out?

-r

@ominous Ahhh, yeah cool. Still getting up to speed. Given a setting close to the Wall, I wonder if the combination of Crab's lack of social niceties and the proximity to the wall requiring other clans to "cut loose a bit", there's a broad enough range of acceptable social behavior that it acts to sort of relax what might be a more rigid, restrictive band of acceptable role play on behalf of players.

@Jennkryst Ahhh, interesting! Well, having read up on this source book, not surprised that it was a candidate for a setting. I see it there, just NE of Hida castle on the map inside this sourcebook. Very cool!

Envisioning a setting, I was actually looking at the other end of the wall, at Razor of the Dawn Castle -- it doesn't seem to be heavily detailed in any of the books so it may be flexible as far as a setting goes. It seems a bit farther back from the most oppressive spots of the wall/shadowlands, and as far as I can tell from reading some online theme has some existing tie-ins for other clans to make an appearance there. Plus, not only does it border the Shadowlands to the West, it borders heavy woodland to the North and North East, putting it square in the middle of some very interesting surroundings.

Re: XP / Chargen -- Having a little min/maxing in there doesn't bother me too much. To your earlier point, it seems fairly tame having given it some review. It's a far cry from a system like 3rd Edition Shadowrun, where it was entirely possible to have a well optimized character walk out of character generation an order of magnitude more powerful than an unoptimized character with multiple-years of playtime under their belt. But yeah -- using the XP system works, though having read the CG system L5R proposes I like how you really leave the process with a clear sense of theme rather than just a collection of numbers.

L5R is actually a super cool setting + theme + game system.

-r

@ominous Yeah, spot on. Though, to be clear, I'm in my infancy of digesting L5R lore, so it's possible some nuance is still lost on me.

The short of it is that one of the Great Clans (Crab) mans this big wall that stands between the rest of the Kingdom and this supernaturally corrupted wasteland known as The Shadowlands. It is, as you describe, an implacable, encroaching force of evil that periodically breaks through (though I'd posit should be infrequently enough as to not convert a source of atmospheric tension into an opportunity for constant action).

So, assuming there's a reasonable hook for a political intrigue setting, you sort of have internal/external tension hanging over the setting, and a lot of lanes for individual character types to have a clear reason for being, and clear opportunities to shine.

-r

@jennkryst I suppose if you really wanted to even the playing field, you could house-rule out something based on the maximum XP gained from such min/maxing, and perhaps implement such that characters that fall short of that theoretical maximum just gain some additional level 1 skills or a ring boost to level 2 based on how far they fall short. So it's more about wanting to play a specialist / generalist than min/maxing.

...regardless, I just bought the 'Shadowlands' Sourcebook. Holy crap, this setting is so awesome. Where has this RPG been????

I think a Political Intrigue MU* set close enough to the Shadowlands to be uncomfortable (and support lots of PC types!) would be so, so, so radical. I almost want to pause refactoring this CP Red Chargen and just build a L5R chargen + dice system just to see how hard it would be. I doubt I could really run a game at the present, but maybe there's someone out there with the will that lacks the means.

-r

@bored Excellent response, thank you. It's funny -- I'm knee deep right now digging into a Cyberpunk Red Chargen System that's not too far from functional (minus the need to be refactored into something a bit more modular), and waffling a bit as I dust off 5th Edition Shadowrun and bounce between the two (CP:Red would likely be the easiest to implement, both given the current state of Chargen + a generally simpler system).

But the above response you just provided has me casting as sideways glance over at this FFG L5R book I bought on a whim. Not going to lie, the replacement of elemental rings vs. attributes has a very intriguing dynamic -- I'm not sure I've come across a game system quite like that. And your assertion that there's still some hard crunch to be found in there is all the more intriguing.

If it's appropriate to ask, what finally gave you cause to close the game down? And if it's not appropriate to ask, feel free to sidestep that question.

-r

@jennkryst Yeah, the more I read the system, the cooler (if a bit fiddly) it seems. Sounds like a really fun game system, though I suspect realistically playing in the setting has a pretty heavy burden on the GM + Players given how specific it is.

Interestingly enough, usually it's the CharGen systems that seem most difficult to code and the dice are fairly trivial -- FFG L5R looks like a pretty straight forward CG system, with an outrageous dice system. I'm almost imagining it being implemented as a little menu system that retains state while a player selects stuff.

-r

@bored Interesting. Appreciate that perspective. Is the FFG version of L5R better for having reduced that niche protection? I understand the dice mechanics for 4e were popular -- is FFG worse for having lost them?

Honestly, having read all the backlog of this thread, it sounds like an L5R MU* would be a lot of fun.

-r

@jennkryst said in FFG L5R:

@greenflashlight said in FFG L5R:

@ominous said in FFG L5R:

@greenflashlight

Yeah, but just because anyone can enter a talking scene scene, doesn't mean they should actually talk. If you have an audience with the Emerald Champion, you want the good with words guy to go be good with words.

The impression I got is, it was the kind of game where your ability to roleplay the intricacies of the setting supersede your character's stats. Unless this hypothetical L&L5R game makes it a rule that you have to roll dice to be polite and personable, I don't see a way around that.

Upvoted for brilliant plan, always roll every social scene ever. I am not joking. If you want to @emit as being super social skilled etiquette-follower... roll those dice and prove it.

In scanning the rules, it does appear that tense social scenes are designed to be routinely engineered and rolled out (in at least some cases) as a conflict to be overcome.

Maybe I'm misreading it, but it feels like some of the 'Attack this cave of kobolds!' aspects of conflict in other games are intended to be 'Navigate this tense intrigue subtext in an otherwise normal setting' in this one. With penalties for 'unmasking' (i.e., losing your cool).

(Edit for an attempt at clarity: Kobolds vs. Social tension)

-r

@nessa Totally fair question. And I believe I left myself a mostly working CP:Red chargen system for Evennia (minus gear) back in the beginning of the year.

I think I was just hoping for that Black Chrome book to drop sometime between last Spring and now, and am questioning the long term viability of a game system that makes a major release less frequently than annually.

Maybe the right answer is to finish that first, before being distracted by the overwhelming cruft that is SR.

EDIT: Going to spin down effort on CP:Red / Shadowrun for a bit and give CP Red an opportunity to release another source book before making a call on that. In the meantime, testing out some ideas for a way of approaching developing a game system that could just be dropped adjacently to a freshly installed copy of Evennia and could be wired up to turn it into a specific game -- tinkering around with this in the context of L5R (because it has somewhat simpler CG rules).

-r

@derp Open to checking it out. Does it have enough crunch?

Asking with acknowledgement that Shadowrun typically has more than enough crunch.

-r

@ominous Great point of clarification, I should edit the original post to clarify that thank you -- the RPG.

-r