Best posts made by Seraphim73

@Roz There's currently no doubling up -- we aren't using the web portal except for Admin access (and if someone wants to do chargen there or connect from there). All the theme files, character pages, and logs are currently on the wiki -- that's the place to be.

@surreality Definitely not. As great as playing from the web portal is if you're on someone else's computer, MU* clients are totally the default as far as we're concerned.

@nyctophiliac Ack! I'm sorry you got creeped out. If you want to let me know the character's name and what creeped you out about the interactions (PMs are great, or a request or mail on the game), we'll certainly address the player. As for the PrP, it slipped through the cracks during the holiday nastiness (one Staffer had a death in the family and a new baby between late November and late January, another Staffer had a massive amount of work over Christmas and hurt their hand, and my mother was diagnosed with brain cancer -- it was not a good holiday season for the Staff). I'll try to get a response to it tomorrow. My apologies for the horrible amount of time it's been.

Setting aside the "roleplaying vs rollplaying" and "mind control and agency" discussions entirely, I would say that whether or not you have social stats should depend on the type of game that you want. If you want a game based around combat awesomeness and (IC but not OOC) social drama with no real teeth, then removing social skills works just fine. But if you want a political game, or a game with any real politics, where the ability to lie and convince matters... you really kind of need social stats, or else (almost) everyone will be perfect IC liars whenever they want to be.

I'm not usually a superhero fan, but a late-30s to 40s OC-only game? That I might play. I mean, it's Indiana Jones + WW2... how can you go wrong? (yes, I'm enough of a history nerd that the necessary research would be fun for me and I understand that isn't for everyone).

@SkinnyThicket said in Does size matter? What about duration?:

What happens if they bump into each other? What about global communication?

You talk it out OOCly, asking "So, when/what time is this scene set?" And then one person will say, "Oh, we just did a scene that lasted until like midnight," and the other person will say, "Huh, we just finished up 3 PM. How about going for a 3AM snack at Taco Bell, or meeting up for last call?

I'm not going to contest that my PC, Grey, has been central to many, or even most, of the plots on the game so far. Wouldn't be any point, he has been. He's a big, loud guy. I hope people haven't been giving him extra leeway in following his lead because I'm Staff. But, it's something we're working on, with a couple of plots in the works that don't involve him at all. I try to ensure that he is never the sole star of anything, and I never want him to take a role that cannot also be filled by a non-Staff PC or hasn't already previously be held by a non-Staff PC. If I'm failing in that, all I can do is try to do better in the future.

As for the Fifth World, since @Ghost has brought it up twice now, NONE of the characters @GirlCalledBlu or myself played were central to the plot in any way. One of my characters led two military missions, both were small and minor. Other characters led more and larger. Plot was funneled through other characters... including his.

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

Here's why that doesn't make sense: it would be like expecting someone who wants to play Walter White to actually know how to make methamphetamine.

Totally agree with you that it's one of the unfair things about RPing. You're not expected to know how to throw a punch in real life in order to be able to knock someone out in the game, you're not expected to know how to cook meth to have a chemistry skill in the game, but you're expected to know how to fast-talk someone to do it in the game. That's one of the reasons that in my Tabletop games, I often ask players what approach they want to take, rather than ask them to come up with the exact words.

But, as others have said... this is one of those unstoppable force/unmovable object arguments in MU*ing.

Here's a better solution: you have an impartial judge help come up with the specifics of the outcome after the die roll. So when a player who already won the bluff check writes a stupid pose, the GM can go, "Come on, that's oh so silly, try this line of thought instead maybe."

Totally agree, but having an impartial judge there all the time... probably doesn't work on a MU*. For Furystorm, I came up with something similar: http://furystorm.wikidot.com/combat#toc14

Basically, each player briefly describes the arguments their character is making, the other player assigns a modifier for how that argument would work with their own character's background/feelings (all the important things @faraday mentioned about what makes social combat hard), the dice are rolled, and then the losing player helps the winning player fine-tune their argument to make it as effective as the dice say it should be.

It doesn't fix bad posing, but it does fix nonsensical arguments married to huge dice pools. And, of course, its baked into the rules that you still can't force someone into TS--even with Earthcrafting (magic).

the babysitter comes, and you're found to be in the wrong, then you lose XP or something. You get punished for wasting their time.

This, on the other hand, I would run away from as fast as I could. I'm pretty convinced it would just make calling a GM even more acrimonious, since not only do you have an argument to lose, but now you have XP at stake too.

@Pyrephox said in Eliminating social stats:

Sometimes it means reaching out OOC and just saying, "Hey, I see you're trying to get my character to do X, and you rolled really well, but that strategy isn't going to work. With Empathy 5, you'd probably know that my character would be far more susceptable to bribery than bluster. Would you like to rewind and try a different pose?"

This, this, this. Remembering that you're trying to tell a cohesive story together, and that matters more than which of you "wins" or "loses" this scene is incredibly important (in my opinion).

I'm with @saosmash and @faraday on most of this. In my mind, Chargen is to set what a character can do, and a BG is to make sure that the player understands the setting to some degree and has a character that fits into it (this is most important in non modern-day settings, not so much in WoD). I would also add that I want to make sure that the most awesome parts of the character's story aren't behind them -- I want characters who do awesome things on grid, not brag about the awesome things they did in their background.

I'll sometimes add some guiding questions to a Chargen wiki page (or in-game help files), but I certainly wouldn't require them to be answered in the BG, they're just there if someone is stuck for details on the character.

I like the idea of unspent points being available after Chargen, to encourage people to build the sheets they want rather than the sheets they think they need, but it just doesn't work well in some systems -- especially those that don't use the same resources in Chargen and Advancement.

I think that Chargen should NOT require that a player have a full understanding of their character before they hit the grid (allowing sheet tweaks for a couple of weeks after approval is great for that), but I do think that it should require that the player have some understanding of their character besides what they do mechanically.

I don't think that justifications for high stats mean that characters can't take high stats, I think it just means, like @faraday mentioned, you want to know how and why their schoolteacher is a professional demolitionist (were they a guerilla until a couple years ago, or have they become one recently?), or their pilot is a martial arts black-belt (was their mother a Marine and pushed them into it, or were they beat up a lot as a kid?).

As a Staffer, I do love having hooks built into BGs, but Staffers in general (myself included) don't use them nearly enough to justify an expansive BG just to provide them. I'm also totally in favor of bullet points for a BG. Don't give me a lot of fluff that doesn't actually tell me what the character can do and how they learned to do it.

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

I'm not saying nobody can be an asshole or a bitch, but its a pervasive enough attitude that its driving multiple players away. ... More than a few people are stepping forward to say their experience on The 100 was that other characters were being overly or needlessly antagonistic and asshole behavior in the majority of their scenes. ... When it was just me, I just quietly left the game. I figured it was just me. But its not just me. There's enough people having similar problems that its become a multi-page discussion on this thread.

So, I'm seeing that running into antagonism caused three people to leave the game. That's not good. However, the latest the two of those players I can identify played was IC Day 5. It's now IC Day 18 (at 1 IC day to 2 RL days, so almost a month ago). I definitely think that things have cooled down some since then. I also don't think it's fair to call this thread entirely about antagonistic RP/attitudes on the game, since we've also had quite a few compliments, some complaints about spotlighting a Staff PC (which has been and is being addressed), and several shots from players of our previous game that have nothing to do with this game at all.

@surreality We've definitely seen people who are on vastly different sides of the key IC divide in the game come together to get things done, and those have been great scenes. Some of those have led to huge Camp-wide swells of support, some of them have led to the characters taking matters into their own hands and being castigated (to one degree or another) by other people in Camp. The way things are done definitely matters for public, IC perception, which is cool.

@Lithium If you're talking about the character I think you are, the character who was OOCly and ICly talking about killing other characters in their sleep was given two warnings about OOC antagonism, and after the second one, left the game (the third strike would have been a siteban). As for the person who was giving you a hard time OOCly about being ICly against bullying, we would have loved to have heard about this problem from you so we could address it. As it happens, the other player in this situation did bring it to our attention, asking if he had gone too far. We told him he probably had, and he has certainly addressed the issue in his actions since then. Sorry you had to go through that.

Sidenote, I think that Faolan is pretty much as far from an OOC or IC jerk to people as can be imagined... except when he's in combat (then step back).

@Lain said in Eliminating social stats:

Now. Onto your point: social skills aren't harder to fake. Especially if you keep it in somewhat vague terms

Here's the problem with this one... you're obviously someone who can write coherently, and has some idea about how social skills work. The concern being brought up is more for people who don't have any sense of how social skills work, and they're quite prevalent on MU*s, because it's a semi-safe way for introverts to pretend to be extroverted.

The problem many people (myself included at times) have with hard-and-fast do-or-die social combat systems is that you get the character rolling up to another character, insulting them, stating that they're out to get them, and then asking for help. Or something else utterly ridiculous that the socially awkward player (not character, player) thinks is a good idea. And the dice say, "YUP! That's a great idea! You win!" It breaks immersion for many players, especially those who DID spend the points to buff up their social defense skills/attributes/whatever, but just rolled poorly.

@gangofdolls I actually kind of prefer non-super-famous PBs too, or at least relatively unrecognizable pictures of super-famous PBs. I am, however, also a hypocrite on this and frequently use Chris Pine and Chadwick Boseman as PBs and have used Bruce Willis and Vin Diesel in the past.

I think for me, the information I need to know is:

• What is my character likely to be doing day-to-day, given their faction/position/job/whatever.
• What is going to be driving my character's extraordinary actions (is there a war on, is interpersonal politics important, is it all about getting a good marriage)?
• What do most of the others (the NPCs) in their faction/position/job/whatever think of other factions/positions/jobs/whatever.
• What is important to the people (NPCs) around my characters, so what would they assume is important to my character?

I'm sure there's more, but for me, those are the big ones.

I would always come to a game I was working on with the default expectation of open sheets. Only then would I ask the design team if they thought we should hide sheet information, and I would ask a lot of pointed questions to find out why, because in my mind, there should be a really, really good reason to hide sheets (and "CvC is going to be prevalent" is not a good reason in my mind).

That being said, I agree with @faraday and others that this applies only to sheets. Don't get me wrong, it can be nice for a player ST to be able to read someone's BG to provide hooks, but I generally feel that "open sheets/closed BG and secrets" is the way to go.

Besides, even if the mild-mannered reporter is hiding a crime fighter (or a criminal), isn't it nice to know that so you can arrange RP with them about it?

@Sunny I would actually go so far as to say that it takes more skill as a writer to get caught lying ICly than it does to lie ICly. I'm not talking about some stupid 'The sky is green' lie, I'm talking about an attempt at subtle manipulation that you've decided is beyond your character (or the dice have decided is beyond your character at the moment) and have posed the little cues that suggest a lie.

Certainly, you can type things like @faraday suggested, and I have, frequently. But there's something of an art (in my opinion) to showing the little cues like avoiding eye contact, a faint stutter or hesitation, that sort of thing, that suggest that a character is lying without blatantly saying so.

@mietze said in Open Sheets?:

Would I want it on a huge impersonal ten alts for every player pvp disconnected/uninvolved staff game, no.

This is actually the type of game I would most want open sheets on. If Staff is uninvolved, you have no way of knowing if the player of the character your character is trying to kill is lying about their stats. Unless the game has open sheets, then you know for sure.

@Three-Eyed-Crow brought up another great reason for open sheets: Newbie directing. I love being able to say "check out the sheets of <three characters> who are also heavy-weapons Marines" (or whatever the role they're apping is). Not only can they see what stats all three have, but they can also see what sub-niches the three characters are filling, so they don't double up.

Heck, Ares even goes one better than this: you can see what every character in the game has in action skills with a single command. It's brilliant. So you want your character to be good but not great with a pistol? Check the levels of every other character in the game with pistols and find a happy medium. It also lets you know if Staff tends to allow near-maxed stats, or if they prefer to keep the range lower.

@Tinuviel I get annoyed by GMs rolling dice for me too (unless I've screwed up the command or can't figure it out, of course). Like, that's my fun, let me have it.

Another reason that I like open sheets (but not BGs/Details of Secrets/whatever) is that they can help bring characters together. Like, if you see another character with "Lacrosse" as a BG skill, you can work out that your characters maybe play in a rec league together (or have played against one another, if you don't want to assume more than acquaintanceship). ETA: Oh look, @faraday beat me to this point. I am not surprised.

To @Admiral and the others backing the "Surprise" view of why closed sheets are good, I get that. Totally do. Some of the best RP I've had has come when I and my character were surprised. I've just gotten used to having to be surprised by what other characters do rather than what they are. It loses something, I totally admit. I just think the trade-off is worth it. Y'all don't, and that's cool.

This sounds totally like the sort of game that I would play in a heartbeat. I think that much like many BSG games, there may be some tone issues, since much of the drama and tension in both BSG and Aliens comes from "OH MY GOD, WE'RE ALL DYING!" and that doesn't tend to happen on MU*s (besides TGG) without copious NPC blood being spilled, but I think that a solid storytelling staff/playerbase can get around that.

Consider me interested in playing, even in testing, but not really able to Staff.

@bad-at-lurking It could be witches, some evil witches, which is ridiculous, 'cause witches they were persecuted and wicca good and love the earth and woman power and I'll be over here.

I would be totally down for that too, @Three-Eyed-Crow. I don't mind losing a character now and then, especially if they a) live just long enough to give some dying words, or b) go out in a big boom (or a spray of acid, I suppose).

@Auspice, I think we should have those discussions again (maybe not on this thread). Because I think it's a very valuable thing for a game to have characters (and players too) invested in NPCs as well as the other PCs around them.

@faraday, yes please. I've noticed that it's often hard for players to get into the world of their character, especially if it's radically different from the real world. That goes for everything from caring about the NPCs around your character to their whole outlook on life. Like, if your character grew up in a time of strife, and the generation ahead of you was much-more-than-decimated while you were still just coming of age, you're going to have a very different outlook on life than if you grew up in the 80s in the United States of America.

I just find it fascinating to get into the headspace of people who grew up in a different time/place than I did.

@arkandel said in Potential Buffy Game:

@zombiegenesis Not that I want a game to be delayed but come on man, if you have the option of launching this right on Halloween then g'dammit, you take it.

I would actually suggest launching it 1 week before Halloween (maybe 2), so that the first RP after characters are approved can be on Halloween.

@faceless said in Looking for potential staff for a Colonial Marines (Aliens) game:

@Seraphim73 and random people I never really got to know from TGG can attest: I ain't afraid to assault a trench on my own. Everyone else will catch up. Eventually.

You were doing it before Wonder Woman made it cool.

@lordbelh said in Wheel of Time:

On the upside, Aes Sedai can't actually use the one power to hurt you anyway, so there's that! Unless you allow Black Ajah, but I'd probably restrict that to NPCs only.

Unfortunately, it is so very, very easy to get around this. For instance, if the Aes Sedai binds an enemy in Air, that's not hurting you, right? And then their Warder walks over, and the Aes Sedai releases them a heartbeat before the Warder stabs them.

Or heck, for a less blatant version, the Child of the Light is fighting the Warder, and the Aes Sedai just slows the Child's arm with Air, letting the Warder run them through.