Best posts made by Seraphim73

@Auspice said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

Give people the opportunity, but make sure they understand that they may face IC backlash for it. I've done that on games and had an -awesome- time of it.

I generally agree with you, but this can be a problem, because so few players actually provide that IC backlash. It's almost always left up to NPCs, usually run by the players taking the opportunity themselves (and often not played very harshly, very few people really like to torment their characters--yes, I know that some do, and yes, it's fun to do so). I really wish that more people would help with that sort of IC repercussions.

@faraday said in Sensitive cultural/political/religious aspects of game themes.:

Saying that the PCs are the exception to the rule only goes so far. Unless you've got people really exercising the "mainstream" NPC viewpoint, the exception becomes all you see and therefore becomes people's mental rule no matter what you say. So you get this weirdly-jarring discontinuity when the person claiming to be oppressed by totally valid IC prejudices ends up looking like a looney since it never happens on-camera. (or if it does, the poor NPC is quickly smacked down by all the modern-sensibility PCs.)

This is another one of those issues where you really need players willing to play the "average" -- characters who represent the general NPC viewpoint. I've actually had great success playing these characters because people really want to get themselves grounded in the universe by interacting with characters who actually represent the universe, rather than the outliers.

@Miss-Demeanor said in The 100: The Mush:

@Seraphim73 Perception may well be the biggest problem that happened on The 100. Because while you're saying that yes this happened but you fixed it... you're neglecting to mention that it happened for months and only got fixed after people had left the game and this thread had started getting snippy about how you two were handling the game. ... By the time it got to the Grounders being open for play, I already had a foot out the door because of unresolved worries and concerns that you and @GirlCalledBlu claimed to be 'watching'

Actually, the last log on the Wiki from your character (assuming I have the right character, if not, I apologize) was IC Day 5. So, 10 RL days. The Grounders were introduced 2 RL weeks into the game (1 IC week). Grounder PCs beyond the first two were on-grid and RPing by IC Day 11 (22 RL days into the game). Just to be clear on the timeline here. And here we come into the perception issue, because we were watching many of the "problem players," and we talked to some of them who we thought were doing things the worst. We may not have come down on them as hard as you would have liked, or, given how things ended up, as openly as we perhaps should have. But your perception that we were doing nothing is not consistent with what we were doing.

There are, however, things that we have learned from this experience. We do not plan to Headstaff on other public games. We've discovered that it's not our cup of tea, and we that have some issues as Headstaff (especially as sole Headstaff, as has been mentioned by you and others here, and we admitted previously was not a good choice) that while we will certainly try to correct going forward, are even easier to simply avoid by not putting ourselves in that position again.

I think you strongly underestimate our intentions to separate player and staff roles and our (general) ability to do so. We definitely did slip up a few times, but I am a very, very strong proponent of the separation between player and staff, always tried to shift any Staff discussions to Staff bits rather than player bits, apologized whenever I answered an on-channel question from a player bit rather than Staff bit, and always tried to separate myself from my role as a player whenever considering something as a Staffer. I explicitly stated on channels and in OOC many times that Grey's words were the words of a character, not a Staffer, and in fact, he ended up being wrong more often than he was right -- by quite a bit -- because I wanted to discourage people from simply taking what he said as the Word of God (and because it can be quite amusing for your character to be wrong). And to be clear, @GirlCalledBlu mentioned sometimes failing to separate the Staffer and Player bits -- as in, talking to someone from a Player bit about Staff issues. Yes, it blurs the lines, yes it's bad, but it's an "oops, my bad" sort of bad, not a "OH GOD, THESE PEOPLE DO NOT SEE THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BEING A STAFFER AND BEING A PLAYER" bad.

@Auspice and @mietze - I can definitely see that perspective, and would absolutely suggest such a thing to the Headstaff of any game I beta'd or assisted with going forward.

@Auspice said in The 100: The Mush:

There's definitely something to overcome if you join a game 'late,' but if you're joining within the first couple months a game is open and there's already a massive power curve... something is wrong.

Definitely not a massive power curve. It was a few XP, I believe 2-3. In fact, we had to boost the power of the starting Delinquents after the introduction of the Grounder/Adult Arker PCs to bring the Delinquents up to the starting level of other PCs. Still, the point, as noted above, is well taken.

@tempest Usually, I've actually complained that Force Users are too powerful, not too weak. There's an easy fix to them (and to other issues like Pilots being a little too dodgy too): Skill Focus bonus = 1/2 level up to a max of +5.

@bored said in Star Wars Stand Alone - Staff Sought:

Stormtroopers (who are kinda scary in this game)

I just want to say that while you bring up worrying notions of balance, even without my having read the book, this makes me grin with glee. Any game/system where Stormtroopers are scary, elite fanatics is good in my book; any game/system where Stormtroopers are hapless mooks is bad in my book.

@Gilette
Yup, exactly that. But without an IC backlash to breaking themely norms, you create new norms, which are usually the opposite of what you intended.

@KDraygo Just wanted to tack on one bit here. Staff has stated that there will be no Feature Character PCs, and that they will only serve as quest-givers and the like.

...and I just realized that you meant Force Character. Wow.

I think it would be very interesting to basically have a roster of minor Force Characters who could be used by players for short periods of time based on the needs of plots they're running. It does, however, have all the downsides of a roster system in that there has to be -meticulous- note-taking to ensure that all relationships and RP remains constant from player to player.

@apu and @Deviante There were some great folks on Fifth World. It made Venus and I very sad that our life got so busy that we just couldn't keep up with the pace of running stuff there. Good to see you both around (the bar fight in Volkan with Eirene and Devon still has a few of my favorite moments).

@Arkandel Yeah... some good memories there.

@Faceless Excellent! I like to know people I know. (?)

@Packrat I agree that channelers should be rare and terrifying in RP, but once you've met a dozen and knocked boots with two... they're just not as scary. And because PCs are PCs, the terrifying thing just never happens anyhow. Which means that unless Staff leans hard into the idea that channelers are terrifying and NPCs fear and hate them, it won't be so, so they will get all the benefits of being beatsticks and none of the downsides of being terrifying social pariahs.

@Ganymede I love Dahan/Gizka's Saga Edition code. Been on... 3 games now with it? Maybe 4? Beautiful stuff (although apparently very complex on the back-end).

@Ganymede With the base rules, a Force User with Skill Focus: UtF and Deflect at level 1 is very nearly functionally immune to blaster fire from a single person. If the Force User takes Force Training at level 1 instead, then at level 2, they are very nearly functionally immune to blaster fire, and can use their Force Powers to attack Defenses with what is effectively +8-10 higher "attack roll" than anyone else can at that level (since they're using a skill with Skill Focus). At level 3, when they take Block too, they become functionally immune to melee attacks from a single person too.

Sure, they're still vulnerable to grenades, flamethrowers, and a few other options (assuming they never took Force Shield, then they're pretty set there too), but until level 9ish, when Attacks and Defenses start to catch up with Skill Focused skills, they're still well ahead of non-FUs. (Oops, @Tempest covered a lot of this, but I'll add to say that I don't believe that it should require multiple opponents to take down a single same-level character--that's pretty much the definition of OP.)

I believe that the restrictions on FUs on Fires of Hope are not because of OPness (the Skill Focus house rule fixes that for Jedi, pilots, political folks, and just about anyone who can "attack" with a skill), but because of theme--a few years before A New Hope, I certainly don't think there should be many Force Users around, and even fewer trained Jedi.

@Deviante
http://theywillreturn.wikidot.com/pub-rumble

@Grindle Just a note (that you probably already know): the Saga Edition system has a Background system already. It's in the Rebellion Era book and is a replacement for the Destiny Point system.

@Goldfish You're totally right. Positive reinforcement is the best.

Delightfully enough (because I agree that non-combat skills are way underutilized on most games--not just most Star Wars games or most Saga games), the first plot-scene on Fires of Hope had absolutely zero attack rolls in it, and a great many skill and attribute checks. I feel that I can brag about this because I was not involved in any way, shape, or form.

I do agree that there should be more scenes where PCs fail--I would love to see PCs fail about 15-25% of the time and get a neutral result another 15-20% of the time.

Edited from Fires of Heaven to Fires of Hope, because I do that way too often and Faceless is a jerk.

I was never on TGG, but I'm a WWII nut, and I was always intensely curious about it. If you do look to open another campaign and are interested in letting in people who weren't there originally, let me know.

So with our own Dieselpunk (and Two-Fisted Tales and Modern Magic) game, we were very careful to present a relatively light Overview page that provided the barest details on the setting with links to deeper study, plus a list of inspirations, a gallery (on another page), and a list of the top 5 pages on our web portal to start reading with.

Just like you, we've found that the amount of setting info and the theme is more dense than some people want with their pretendy fun-times (I want to be clear that I don't mean any insult by that--some of my better online friends have decided that they want something that they don't have to study as much to enjoy, and I respect that decision). I think that Runescryer has provided some great ideas, and I would also urge you to layer your content, so that people can just dip their toes in if they want, or they can stick their whole leg in, or if they choose to dive in they're at least diving into the deep end.

I voted for medium with temp-rooms.

I think that the most important thing with a grid, however, is that all of the rooms have a purpose--and not just to get from Point A to Point B. There should be at least one solid roleplaying hook in each room, and the room should tell the players something about the area that it's in and the people who live there.

Example time!
If, for instance, there is a dive bar on the street, and the dive bar's pool table is torn to hell, and the dartboard has deep punctures in it, and there are peanut shells all over the floor, catching on sticky spots, that tells you something about the neighborhood (it's not a high-class one), the bar (there is (probably) violence here rather frequently, and they don't care much for cleanliness), and the clientele (they're strong and/or not very coordinated). Who this group of strong, violent, uncouth people are might be an interesting RP hook for players on a macro sense (and in a micro-sense, they can comment about the crappy dartboard, or run their fingers along tears in the surface of the pool table, or complain about it ruining their shots, or their steps can crunch on peanut shells).

I do, however, like a grid that is relatively compact (20-30 rooms, in 3-4 areas) so that RP doesn't get spread out too far--on the other hand, I don't want all scenes to take place in the same 3 rooms.

Both Blu and I play on Fires of Hope, and Blu is indeed wiki-staff, but that is her only role on Staff (and she only has a Staffbit so that she can get +requests regarding the wiki), and I have no role at all on Staff.

@Otrere said in Web portals and scenes and grids oh my!:

Even with your two axes, we'll really only end up with three types of scenes:

• "live" - shorter average pose speed, less than a day.
• "asynch, one-day" - longer average pose speed, probably people at work or busy with RL. Maybe the pace improves when they all get home, maybe not.
• "asynch, multi-day" - yeah, we're gonna take our time with this to play it all out.

In my own experience, there’s one more type of scene:

• “Live Burst” - 1-3 hours of live play, a pause usually around 12-20 hours, and then another 1-3 hours of live play to finish it up.

I log scenes because the games that I play on use wikis with logs, and because I like reading back over the logs even years later.

I will go back and retroactively log (copy-and-paste) OOC communications if a problem has occurred, or I will proactively log communications if I'm starting up a conversation that I think might need it.