Posts made by Seraphim73

Heh. Okay, I sort of get that. I'm a desc-nerd, and would totally try to describe that (probably starting with the segmented plates over the abdomen and ending with either the fringe over the hands or the snowflake/feather hair), but I sort of get that one. I think you get a pass on that one. But when it's just a pretty standard high-fashion dress? Eh. "Gorgeous red dress with an corseted bodice, cap sleeves, a short train, and a slit up to the thigh on the left side" should cover it well enough.

@goldfish I'm a big fan of outfit posing when the outfit is a) out of the ordinary/different from their desc, or b) is important to the current status of their character (rumpled, bloody, neat and pressed like you said). Otherwise... I'd prefer a desc. And it really peeves me when someone uses a link to some high-fashion outfit and says "my character is wearing that." Like, okay, that's fine, but... eh. I prefer text to pictures for describing things that aren't going to be scene-necessary (I love reference photos for terrain that combat is happening over, for instance).

Totally agreed with @surreality about the name-dropping too.

@roz Honestly, once we update to the latest version that Fara is working on right now... I might try to talk Blu et al into moving over to the Web Portal. It'd mean a bunch of transition work, but the changes she's put in... seem very, very good. I do feel a little bad about not using the web portal, but I like what Blu (and the rest of us) has done with the wiki so very much.

ETA: In the meantime, I've found it more effective to just copy-and-paste from scene/log into the wiki page, rather than uploading the scene onto the web portal first.

I wanted to respond to a couple of explicit notes here. I've reached out to some people directly via messages, but wanted to respond to some on the board in general.

@arkandel (and others as far as timezones go) - Totally get and agree with the activity catch-22. I'm trying to get in some shorter scenes during the day while my daughter is napping as well as the late-night RP, and we're going to get in touch with a couple of people as GMs shortly to expand the plotrunners available.

As far as carrots go, I think that Fara has done a really good job with the skill progression, but there definitely isn't much in the way of rank progression or anything like that. It was a bit of our hope that people would look to carve out personal domains a bit, but perhaps that's something we need to plant some more explicit seeds for. I think that while some of that isn't things we can do anything about, there are absolutely things that we can do to help.

We've actually been hoping that people would run their own monster or buccaneer scenes whenever they wanted to. We're totally open to folks running spur-of-the-moment scenes with a whole host of beasties and NPC pirates. Seems we need to make that more clear.

@Ganymede - I fully expect there to be pirate duels and brawls (there was one, but it was relatively tame). I sincerely hope that this continues. Our goal with CvC has always been that individual CvC is great as long as the players are mature about it, but we want to avoid whole-crew CvC.

@surreality - God yes, is Ares awesome. Even though we're not using it to its full extent (still using a wiki instead of the automated website), Faraday has a whole heck of a lot to be proud of with this system.

@Scissors - Yeah, we've realized that we really should have started out in the Real World, gotten people involved in more "pirate-y" stuff to start with, and then thrown them into the Spirit World. We had been hoping that the Spirit World stuff would tie them together so that they wouldn't have reason to get involved in crew-vs-crew conflicts while they were in the Real World (since we have English Navy, Spanish merchants, and Pirates as crews, plus all the combat and non-combat shore folks). Definitely a mistake though. Should have gone for the most genre-defining stuff first, then shaken things up.

@roz We actually expanded the grid a little bit, making a few more of the temp-rooms into perma-rooms. It's about 25% bigger now. I would, however, love to get some suggestions on what you felt was missing (if it was anything in particular).

@WildBaboons I'd be happy to run through things with you to try to figure out what went wrong, whether or not you plan to continue playing on the game (in case you play on an Ares game in the future).

@arkandel Yup. I don't have a huge deal spoiling general ideas that we have. It's the methods and characters that will (hopefully) be interesting. There are a couple of things about the Spirit World (and any presumptive return to the Real World) that I definitely don't want to spoil though.

Edited to Add:
To everyone who responded: Thank you, we'll take a look over the input, and see what sort of tweaks we can make. Unfortunately, timezones are hard for Blu and I, but we're looking at bringing on a couple more GMs to help spread events out and keep them moving.

Original Post:
@pondscum We're going to be talking about that with folks on the game, so I don't feel bad sharing it here, but the plan was always to have the PCs figure out who caused Tortuga to be drawn into the Spirit World and to figure out how to get it back into the Real World (we had no specific plans on how the latter would happen because we wanted to be able to go with whatever the characters came up with). The trip to the Spirit World and back would allow the monsters access to the Real World again, but there would also be more pirate-y stuff available. The intent was to use the time in the Spirit World to try to weld the disparate PC groups (Reavers, Santiagos, Impudents, and Shore-folks) together so that they had reason not to go after each other (on a ship-wide scale, we're totally okay with individual CvC) once they got back to the Real World.

We lost a lot of people over the holidays, and in the interest of improving the game and making it more fun for those either returning or still around, I want to reach out to those folks who have left the game to find out why they left. If you feel comfortable, I'd love to get a private message from folks who left for a particular reason to find out why that might be and what you would have liked to see instead. We've gotten some great feedback from a few folks already, and we're very appreciative of it.

The only way I can get fully into a character's head is to see them do their thing. If it's a political character, I have to get a speech written for them, or do some wheeling and dealing. If it's a combat character, I have to play them in a fight, whether it's a spar or real combat. If they're a pilot, I have to see them behind the wheel/in the cockpit.

PBs help. Sometimes music helps. But I have to see them do what they do best.

Also, movies and books within their genre help. With my swashbuckler, I've been reading a lot of Sharpe and watching The Musketeers and The Adventures of Robin Hood (and if they were streaming, I would totally watch The Sea Hawk and/or Captain Blood).

@quinn said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

Maybe we all need to agree on the steps that we usually see/take:

1. Event gets posted/shouted, people sign up/show interest.
2. Event gets run, people show up and play!
3. Players RP amongst themselves about things. Perhaps put in +requests for more information and followup (?)
4. Another scene is run either because players have followed up, or plot runner has more to move it forward to try to get people involved (?)
5. Repeat of steps 3-4 as necessary until plot runner gets burned out / until plot is finished (?)

So, is question how to keep that momentum going or how to inspire people who only want to do steps 1 and 2 to move onto later steps? Or both?

My original question was both, and a little more. I always love players who RP among themselves after an event and put in requests for followup, those who chase down plot-hooks that lead to events (request Strange Sounds Investigation=There's a rumor post (bbread #/##) up about strange sounds at night outside of town, my PC is interested in looking into that), and those who put interesting tidbits into random scenes for other players to grasp hold of.

@scar gave us a great suggestion on T8S, which we ended up calling Quick Missions just because that's what came out when I started typing up the first one: little plot-ideas posted up on a board that people can incorporate in scenes. Like, sidequests in a video game. They require zero Staff input, and can just be run any time, anywhere, by anyone.

Thus far, one of the five or six we've posted has been picked up on.

It feels like these are the sorts of things that people used to do for themselves without prompting, but now they won't even engage in when prompted.

A lot of the ideas and suggestions put forward in the previous pages are great ones. I'm glad that I'm not the only one who has noticed a decrease in proactive players and an increase in players wanting events spoonfed to them (okay, I'm sad I've noticed it, but I'm glad I'm not the only one who has).

It seems to be a pretty strong consensus that proactive players--players who actively seek out things for their characters and the characters of other players to do on a game--are good for a game. It also seems like a bit of a no-duh statement.

And yet, it feels to me as if the number of proactive players, at least on the games that I play on, has shrunk significantly in the last decade.

Whether or not the second point is true, I would like to hear thoughts on how to find, cultivate, and encourage proactive players. Whether this is from a Staff perspective ("I was on a game and Staff did X and it encouraged players to be proactive") or from a player perspective ("When a game does/has X, it encourages me to be proactive"), I'm curious and interested.

@surreality (it's always more complicated than that). I'd be happy to take a peek at whatever you've got -- I like seeing the systems other people come up with -- although it'll probably be a while before I get a chance to. RL is busy.

@ortallus said in Social Systems:

How intimidated am I really by the smurf with a nerf bat and 20 charisma telling me to drop my weapon? Yeah, no."

Now, if the smurf says, "Drop your weapon or my buddy the sniper will put one through your throat..."

@surreality: I would say that some people can't lie to save their lives, but can be plenty convincing with the truth, while some people can spin a lie out of fairy gossamer and spider silk that looks like the Arc de Triumph, but can't do so well with the truth. But in the end, I think that it depends on your skill list in general. If you have, for instance, just "Melee" and "Ranged" skills, I think that "Convince" or even "Social" is totally fine. But if you have "Blades," "Bludgeons," "Spears," and "Unarmed," or "Pistols," "Rifles," and "Throwing," then you should probably have "Persuade" and "Deceive" or "Convince" and "Schmooze" or some other words that give you 2-3 social skills.

@ghost said in Social Systems:

I agree though, a preexisting proclivity is reasonable. My examples weren't iron clad, but this is why Google, surveys, etc exist. It's to find those preexisting proclivities, because ad firms pay HUGE sums of money to find those proclivities to avoid trying to sell ice to polar bears.

To be fair, many polar bears could probably use some more ice these days.

On topic, I think that any social system that doesn't include modifiers, a simple yes/no, or something to take target preferences into account is a failed one. For all the reasons that you and @faraday mentioned.

As for the question about John McClane, I would say that he has a really high Willpower (he went walking around with glass-cut feet for 1/3 of a movie, after all), but that doesn't mean that he didn't also get a free (no-roll) pass from the theoretical GM to decide to "do something" about the terrorists crashing the party.

@Ghost

I'd love to be able to effectively lie ICly to any given player and not have it be treated like an OOC betrayal or cheating.
But even with dice, they'd know deception was rolled so...

Yeah, this is another issue of trust. When we trust other players, we can trust that when their character screws our character over, they aren't screwing us over. And yes, I'd like it too. But, being fair, I have gotten myself worked up about my character being lied too previously. Looking back, I have no idea why. But it's happened.

@faraday

You can't collaborate if you don't metagame to some extent.

I think there's a difference between collaborating and the metagaming being described by Ghost and @Arkandel. Collaborating is (obviously) working together, and the metagaming they're describing (and the sort that I abhor as well) is using OOC knowledge not to make the collaborative scene better, but to gain some advantage. Yes, in order to be a good RP partner, you have to remember that you're participating in an experience with other people, and sometimes can't "perfectly" play the character, because doing so would suck for those around you.

I don't think you're in the minority, I just think that Ghost and Arkandel and I have narrower definitions of metagaming than you do.

@roz I'm totally fine with disagreement. I also agree that having a weighted randomization method in RP is awesome. I should have been more precise in my language: I believe that lack of trust is why we need stats in CvC situations. And yes, sometimes we still just want a randomizer when we're playing with people we know and trust, but I believe that we don't need stats in those situations, you can just roll a die or flip a coin, because everyone trusts everyone to "play fair."

I think that @faraday's 4 (or so) points were a good rundown of why social systems are so hard to work into games, especially online games (@ZombieGenesis 's story shows that it's not just online games though). I think, however, that it all comes down to one singular point: Trust.

If you trust the other players not to screw with your character with the social combat system, not to push them into something that is totally against their morals, then you have fewer problems letting the dice make the (more minor) decisions for you in social situations.

If you trust the other player, then you're more willing to accept their view on potential modifiers for a social roll: "Oh, your character had a kitten that they loved growing up? Sure, I'll take a -3 on my attempt to get them to drown kittens." Sadly, there isn't a whole lot of trust out there in the MU*osphere (with good reason, read some of the Hog Pit threads if you doubt why), so when someone says, "My character had a kitten that they loved growing up, you could never get them to drown a kitten, EVER!" the initial response is often, "Oh, you're just trying to avoid the consequences of messing with my social-fu character" instead of "Interesting roadblock, could be fun to RP getting around (or not, based on how the RP and dice go)."

I've tried to design a system that allows for that sort of back and forth with modifiers and negotiation... but it still requires that you trust the other player at the end of the day.

As for social stats vs physical stats, even on PvE games, there's usually at least the possibility of another PC punching your PC (even if they aren't trying to kill yours), and usually you use combat stats for that. But if social stats can't be used against other PCs... well, they're less valuable. Granted, this is the same compromise we chose on the last couple of games I Staffed on (social stats only work on NPCs) because it's a nice clean line and still allows a social character to be created.

@faraday said in Sci Fi/Opera Originality:

Which I think is another hurdle Original Sci-Fi games (and established ones too) have: focus. When the entire galaxy is your playground, herding the cats together becomes more of a challenge.

Agreed 100%. I would strongly suggest to anyone looking to create original-theme sci-fi that you come up with a way for quick and easy interaction. Whether it's wormhole drives that allow instantaneous space travel, 'casting into another body like in Altered Carbon, Waygates like in The Fifth World, the ability to join anyone anywhere in real-time VR, or... I don't know... something that allows anyone anywhere to RP with anyone else anywhere else any time.

Any movement on this? I finished my reread of the series a while back (yes, all 14 books; yes, several of the books in the middle were lame; yes, I'm crazy), and getting a hankering again.

@apos said in Sci Fi/Opera Originality:

But also take any near future sci fi, cyberpunk and so on, all of those also are also minimized and simple too, so imo you are pretty much just left with sci fi settings trying to define something completely alien.

I would disagree that Dune or Warhammer 40K is fantasy (I don't know enough about Fading Suns to comment on that), but that's neither here nor there. Let me put it this way, in most fantasy games, you can say, "Tech level is generally 14th century, magic is scarce and feared, there's an orc army gathering to attack you, and a dragon lives in a cave on the mountain south of the city," and people can RP day-to-day life in the city. Yes, that's a slight exaggeration again, but not much of one. I'm pretty sure I could RP a character in that city for a couple of months without anything more than that to go on. But for a sci-fi game, technology is day-to-day. Do you have replicators to feed you, or do you go to greasy spoon diners? Do you take a flying car to work, teleport there, or telecommute?

And even there, I still don't agree. A creator just doesn't have to chase down all the rabbit holes.

These aren't rabbit holes, this is straight-forward day-to-day stuff that will come up in 2/3 of scenes. Is there a person behind the counter at the local coffee shop, or a droid, or an alien? Do I have a smartphone or a telecom implant to call my friends to come join me? How do I pay for my coffee? Yes, some of it can be handwaved, but the point is, a lot of it is simply default information that you can get across in 2-3 sentences for a fantasy game, but not for a sci-fi game. And while most people are willing to read 2-3 sentences to get them ready to play a game, a lot fewer are willing to read the 2-3 wiki pages necessary to lay out the basics of daily life in a sci-fi game.

Hell, for The Fifth World, we had a wiki page for economics, one for culture, one for fashion, one for general tech, and one for entertainment (that doesn't even count military, magic, nobility, the Hostiles, the various locations...), and we still couldn't nail down the feel that we were going for. Was some of that our fault for not writing the right things? Probably. But it was also a bare minimum required to get across some semblance of the feel we were going for.

I think that the debate @Apos is having with @surreality and @faraday comes down to the differences between sci-fi worlds and fantasy worlds (someone already made much of this point, and I apologize for missing who it was): You can tell someone that your world is low-magic feudal fantasy and they can play in it while you hash out the details; you can't tell someone that your world is high-tech meritocratic space exploration and let them play in it while you hash out the details.

Sci-fi tells stories via technology (that's why it's -science- fiction (and why Star Wars isn't sci-fi for the most part)), so you sort of need to have details on what the technology does in order to use it "properly" in RP. Fantasy tells stories via wonder, so all you need to know is "what level of magic do we have, what sort of fantastic creatures do we have, are we knights-in-armor or barbarians-in-furs" and you can start telling stories. Meanwhile, the sci-fi game is telling people if they have power armor, if they use kinetic energy weapons or lasers, how ubiquitous space travel is, how fast space travel is, etc.

Yes, I'm definitely exaggerating how easy it is to set up a fantasy game, Arx in particular has done a fantastic job of creating a coherent world that is easy for people to play in. But the thought behind that exaggeration remains the same: you don't need all the details to play day-to-day in a fantasy world, but you do need a ton of those details to play day-to-day in a sci-fi world.