Best posts made by Sammi

@Trundlebot said:

And it looks a lot like they're reducing creative freedom and intensifying the trauma drama, which is the exact opposite of the way I was hoping the new edition would go.

Reducing creative freedom, maybe. We'll see how the Elemental and Wizened writeups look, and then how the published documentation turns out. Tentatively, yes, but if they are it's a mostly neutral change. You can still hypothetically make anything you want with the 300 kiths, and then your character's personality shepherds them into one of six categories.

As for trauma drama, I'll point out that each Seeming has a mechanic that allows them to regain a point of Clarity. That's something that first edition never had.

Edit: Since changelings determine their own Seeming, there's also less trauma drama of the "I'm cursed with a mien that doesn't fit me" kind. Kith has to have some connection to your personality, and Seeming is a result of your own actions (even if you come to regret them later).

@Trundlebot said:

Okay no one point out I'm dumb, I already remembered that now kiths work entirely differently so I guess you can be a fairest or darkling animal-person or whatever.

I was going to point that out, yes. The genteel housekeeping spider would probably be Wizened, or maybe Darkling.

So I guess that makes seeming just like... a vague outline of a character archetype? Leader, Rebel, Tough Guy etc.. Like TVTropes when it didn't suck or something.

Yes-ish. Seeming is an archetype based on the choice the character made that allowed them to escape Arcadia.

Hm. But then seeming still affects how that kith manifests so... like I guess it's not the idea of a slot for "character archetype" that I mind, it's just that that seems different than what seeming was about and the connection between the two feels both stifling and kinda arbitrary.

It's definitely different from what Seeming was about, and every relationship between things in a game system is arbitrary by definition. Maybe it feels more arbitrary than usual because you're so used to them having something to do with one another, and now they have no relationship.

@Mnemosyne said:

The Fairest weren't the Sidhe, that's sort of exactly my issue with this. This writeup is a writeup of the Sidhe.

The Fairest design space included most of the Sidhe design space. Almost every concept that fit into the Sidhe would have translated to the Fairest, and both Sidhe and Fairest shared a sense of callous superiority and divinely granted privilege.

But why? That's the exact opposite of the 1E Fairest. That's my quibble here.

Because a designer wanted to do something new when reworking the game. Vampire and Werewolf have both been substantially changed, and Demon bears no resemblance except for a name. Did you expect Changeling to be any different?

A lot of formerly Fairest concepts are going to fit into other Seemings. A lot of concepts from other Seemings are going to fit the Fairest. It's a brand new landscape to explore, and that's exciting. That's why I'm supportive of the changes, even the ones I'm not sure I like at first (a lot of my Darkling ideas are now Beasts, which could cause awkwardness for the Contracts I want; and I have no idea how Elemental is going to fit into this paradigm where you make a choice that defines yourself). It's new, it's interesting, and so far all of the GMC games have turned out pretty cool.

Yes, as I said, I'm specifically disappointed that my favorite 1E splat has been given a complete 180 into something else. I'm perfectly fine with the game being reworked. I think this specific reworking is dumb.

You're saying that Elrond and King Arthur didn't fit into the Fairest paradigm before? I think they did. I wouldn't call this a 180. It's more like a 20-degree shift.

That is really not what is suggested by the Kith document, at all. The Kith document basically has the Kith as a texture that's overlaid on top of a Seeming's physical archetype.

A better way to think of it: kith is the fabric, and the changeling's choice of Seeming cuts a pattern out of it. What you are in Arcadia is the raw material, and you forge yourself via your choice to escape (this falls in to one of six archetypes).

I'm sure there's no shortage of possibilities! But there are still fewer than there were in 1E, and to me that's a strange revision to make.

The major change is that you have to make the choice to escape (no randomly being let go) and that this choice defines you as much as the whims of your Keeper. So changelings who don't fit their Seeming are out. I don't see any limitations other than that.

Jesus, you're unpleasant. It must be really terrible going through life with such an antagonistic attitude. I revise my earlier assessment: you're not tone-deaf, you just need people to dislike you and not want to play with you in order to justify your feelings toward the world.

Plus, even if you do break it up into sections that the game can store, that much solid text is a huge pain to read in the MU* client window. You'll lose many readers with each page of information unless they have a reason to believe that it's important. Reading the text in a browser window is much less tedious.

@Apos said:

@Sammi Every scene in public rooms would be open in some games, to make it not open would be a break of the game culture and incredibly rude, since you are forcing everyone else to conform to your own sandbox, ie being very entitled and imposing upon everyone else on the game. In that environment of course individuals would rp immediately, since being in public rooms is an actual advertisement and invitation to RP.

I really think you are confusing distinct and different gaming cultures with entitlement. Speaking to someone oocly would be flat out rude, since you are destroying the mood of their scene by doing so, much in the same way spamming people with ooc chatter in an intense scene would be on most games.

Like I said, I don't believe that it should be treated as a matter of taste. I don't care if there are some games where someone coming into a scene gets treated like royalty. Any game where people in an ongoing scene are not permitted to take their scene elsewhere to preserve the narrative is doing a disservice to the people already in a scene.

In some parts of America, it's considered "polite" to lie outright. You are not permitted to give an honest answer to an honest question and if someone says, "Bless your heart," what they really mean is, "You're a fucking moron." That is a different culture, yes. Any culture that promotes dishonesty and toxicity is a bad culture, just like any culture that promotes the idea that an individual deserves to be waited on hand and foot. Some cultures believe in beating gays or mutilating vulvas or waging war for their gods. "It's another culture" is not a legitimate defense unless it can be applied to all cultures. It falls immediately if you can indicate that the other culture is harmful. I believe that Kanye's culture is mostly harmful to Kanye, hence why I was trying to explain some things about being collaborative. On the other side, while I enjoy helping people, I tire of those who exhibit learned helplessness and I feel like fully able people who need the same help repeatedly are unnecessarily burdensome.

@Kanye-Qwest said:

@Sammi
Are you staff on this game?

Nope, and nor am I vindictive enough to volunteer because of you.

@Ganymede said:

Sometimes, I enter a public room where there's RP going on, and I politely state that I'll make my entering pose a couple of poses down the line. I didn't ask the existing players where I could join or not, and it is reasonable to presume that I could if the scene was taking place in a public room. If my inclusion is inappropriate or unwanted, it is reasonable to presume that the existing participants would inform me of that and take their RP elsewhere. As you will likely concur, expecting people to take private scenes in a public place to a +temproom is reasonable.

It's very reasonable (and I stated at the beginning that I believe people in a private scene should always vacate if other people want to use the public space), but all of that relies on some amount of OOC interaction even if you don't explicitly ask permission to join. When you jump in on an ongoing scene, you're going to first find out where and when the scene is taking place as well as a rough idea of the background activity. Often, the next participant in the queue will bulk up their existing pose in order to provide a set for the newcomer. All of those things that make for a collaborative experience fall under OOC communication, which Kanye posited is negative (since people take it personally).

I think you may be taking Kanye's comments too literally.

This may be, but Kanye has yet to make any attempt to revise or clarify their statements. They have called me a bitch multiple times. That sort of rejoinder is consistent with my reading of Kanye's statements as an indicator of personality and social expectations. When I make a reasoned and civil criticism and the result is being sworn at, I am disinclined to question my initial reading.

Noncommittal answers are definitely the best way. I've seen the same thing happen with someone who was still logging in to the game and could easily have been contacted, but had been very short on RP time lately so playing with people who were available when they were and getting important scenes done took precedence over "relationship maintenance".

It boils down to a philosophical disagreement between people who assume that nothing happens off-screen between characters unless they explicitly agree to it, and people who assume that coworkers and significant others usually see each other all the time regardless of whether their players are RPing much.

On top of what Roz says, I believe that a game's founders should be absolutely clear on what they expect of their game's culture, which is going to involve some imposition of subjective values on others. That way, players who don't like it can choose to patronize other games (unless there's no other game in that niche) and players who accept it are all on roughly the same page regarding conduct.

Basically every game has a consent policy, but I don't think that goes quite far enough. You also can't boil it down as far as vague platitudes like "Be excellent to each other." I also think that Halicron's list is much longer than necessary, but some people might want a document like that. There should be at least a couple of short paragraphs on what the vision is and how players are expected to behave, that everyone sees when they're new to the game.

Eclipse Phase (or similar Altered Carbon-esque setting) would be superb for this style of play. Then assassination plots could be minor setbacks. "The Game" could be lethal and totally fucked up because all of the people with the influence to play have enough cash to keep backups stashed away and get new bodies on demand.

The only existing CoD chargen that I know of is coded for MUX, so I'd go with that unless one of the coders around here really wants to modify it to fit Penn.

@Vorpal said:

For a while I was part of the classical music community and performed several live concerts, but I haven’t done that in a while. I still attend concerts by friends in both popular and classical music fields- one of the staple duos there being Jaycatt and Frogg, two old friends of mine.

I'm glad they're still doing stuff. I went to a few of their concerts many seasons ago, and I liked it.