Best posts made by Seraphim73

@arkandel I play character types that I like, not power sets that I like (usually). I often play troopers or pilots in Star Wars games, I played Children of the Light on WoT games, and I play Punisher, Arsenal, etc on superhero games. I do it because I like being sort of "the default," something that helps reinforce the setting. Also, I like having to think of a creative solution rather than just throwing a big fireball. I also enjoy being set up to be JUST THAT AWESOME //despite// not having powers. When the Clone Trooper can drop the Dark Jedi Acolyte because the Clone Trooper is just that badass (and that high level), it's a lot more awesome than when the Jedi can drop the Dark Jedi Acolyte. When Frank Castle figures out a way to take down Abomination, it's a lot more impressive than Hulk doing it.

@greenflashlight said in Balancing wizards and warriors:

"It's not harming a human! It's just throwing a boulder! GRAVITY is hurting the human!"

This one is even easier: "Are you telling me that your character is stupid enough to think that dropping a boulder on that human with the One Power (magic) isn't going to hurt them? Because your character is actually magically bound to not hurt humans with the One Power."

@juniper I have absolutely had that reaction -- to someone who emphasized in every pose how gorgeous their character was. I have zero problems with people playing pretty characters -- male or female -- (I do it too), I have zero problems with a player mentioning every now and then how pretty their character is in a pose, but I do have that instinctive reaction that you mentioned when someone repeatedly hits me (and everyone else in the scene) over the head with how absolutely stunning their character is. That feels to me like their looking for attention and to be told how pretty they are and want to pull the spotlight onto themselves.

Are my feelings on that always right? Nope! Do I feel like this happens more often with female characters? Yup! Is that maybe because I just notice it more frequently with female characters? Yup! Do people still have the right to relish in how beautiful the character their playing is? Yup! Am I still going to have that instinctive reaction if (in my opinion) they overdo it with the mentions of their character's beauty? Probably.

@Ghost I assure you that the locking of the wiki was just to retain the Staff-created setting information. I can also assure you that I will make every attempt to keep anything driven by other players out of anything written.

Tropes being tropes, and Staff having laid out some details of the family backgrounds, some similarities will undoubtedly remain, but I will definitely be trying to keep anything created by non-Staff PCs out of any finished product.

On a side-note, I mentioned several times on public channels that I hoped to write a book or books set in the world, although I'll admit that we probably should have put together some agreement or disclaimer on the wiki.

Before using FS3, I couldn't imagine a combat scene with more than about 8 players. With FS3, if you have players who know what they're doing, I would feel comfortable running a combat for 20 players without much of a problem (and regularly ran combat scenes with 10-15 players on tFW).*

I'm generally against +places code (because I love to see what everyone is doing, no matter how spammy things get), but I do like the idea of places code that was just a colorized notation of where in the room things were occurring tagged onto the start of the pose. What would be really cool would be code that allowed such places to be created on the fly by players. This would let them create "places" like "Around <name>" or "in front of the stage" or whatever. One other solution that I've seen work really well is "arena" code, which made all poses and emits from one room show up in the second room, allowing people to watch gladiatorial matches, melees, or whatever without their non-combat poses spamming the combatants.

I totally agree with the suggestions to summarize anything that isn't interactive (wedding ceremonies, NPC trials that the PCs aren't interacting with, etc). You don't want several rounds of people posing sitting still and watching (or perhaps worse, getting into a major argument ICly and disrupting the scene).

Modified 3-pose-rule is absolutely critical. You absolutely cannot keep strict pose order, but you also have to keep from leaving people behind, because it's really easy to get lost in a big scene. I like to go with "3-pose-rule, so long as everyone in your immediate group who isn't afk has posed too."

For a court scene, a living agenda doc is a spectacular idea, keeping people up to date and moving. Having a designated "catch up" person to bring latecomers up to date is awesome too.

*I've noticed, however, at least with the set of code being used on Omens, that anything more than about 28-29 combatants tends to make +combat hang.

@Packrat said:

• Make the game an actual sandbox, that does not mean staff should not introduce plot elements and run NPCs with agendas but they should be deciding 'Where do we want the story to go?' then railroading things. The meat of the game should be competition between player characters and the environment they find themselves in.

I don't think that many people would suggest that Story Staff decide where they want the story to go and then railroad it in that direction. In my opinion, storyline should always be a collaboration between Staff and players, with Staff dropping in story hooks and players following them (or not) as they please. Of course, not following a plot hook can have consequences as readily as following one can, but Staff should see what sort of stories -do- get interest from players, and tailor future stories in that direction.

My own favorite Story Staff style is dropping hooks, and then reacting to player actions to let them drive the story while Staff nudges it in a way that can keep it going.

@Apollonius said:

Elective monarchy.

I love it. A good excuse for the next leader-person jumping over someone who is more senior if that next leader-person is more active/well-liked ICly/skilled at playing the game.

Discourage marriages.

LnL players aren't going to go for this. If you want to discourage love-matches, don't advertise as a LnL game, because it will drive players batty. Don't get me wrong, I think that the loveless odd-couple match that turns into mutual respect (or mutual IC hatred) can be quite interesting. But if there's not an outlet for love-matches, you're going to drive many of your players crazy.

Organic game balancing. ... Let them march into that one faction that everyone is playing in. Know what happens when that happens? They start fighting within and the faction breaks apart into multiple factions.

If you can manage this... awesome. Especially the part about splitting a single faction into multiple factions. But be wary, there are a lot of carebear players out there who don't want to ever do anything (in public) that would even slightly annoy another player, and they tend to band together to play WhiteHat whenever someone stirs up factionalism/antagonism/villainy.

Did I mention, encourage assassinations?

The modern generation of MU*ers are extremely character-death-averse. They want to build the story that they want to build, and they don't want it to end until they're ready for it to end (ie, when they've "won"). There are outliers, and they are awesome. Encourage them, give them XP for their next characters when they are WhiteHatted to death, and keep encouraging them. But don't be surprised if either 1) barely anyone dies, or 2) people start leaving (or hiding in private rooms doing private RP) when characters start dying.

@Lithium said:

I also like it when a scene gets my adrenaline pumping because I may end up in real trouble, might lose the character, or a characters friend might be in serious trouble.

Yes, so very much to your whole list, but especially this. That feeling of "Oh man... I might have actually gotten in over my head, this could be the end of the character or the storyline" is such a rare one these days, and it's so great for the adrenaline, and (provided you make it through) gives you plenty to play with afterwards. Of course, it can't just be "man, the dice are going to kill me this scene," it's got to be something where something beyond random dice luck might stop the character.

@Misadventure said:

When you think about having an effect, how big an effect to you hope for?

This probably says something about me as a person, but I want that effect to be big enough for other players to talk about it ICly and OOCly.

Perhaps the most entertaining example I've had recently was back on Generations of Darkness, where my clone trooper got the kill-shot on Grievous (fighting alongside a bunch of Force Users and a non-clone officer). It didn't change much theme/setting-wise: Grievous was still dead, the CIS threat was ended, but it gave people a reason to know this one lone clone trooper, and to talk about him (and boy howdy was it great propaganda for Palpatine when he went all Order 66... or rather it should have been, but that's another story).

I want to see PCs and NPCs react to my actions. It doesn't have to change theme or setting long term, but I want to see the setting accept my action and react to it.

@lotherio Sorry, I actually did read your post a little too quickly and thought that you were saying that some of the folks who left did so because they bought into the propaganda/perception of reality. I see now that you were speaking directly about Germans in the '30s and '40s. I apologize for the misreading. I still don't think it's a great idea to use Nazis as an example for a group (or several groups) of people who have a different opinion from you.