Best posts made by ShelBeast

@Lain

Man... don't even get me started... Have you ever read a combat log between two combaty characters? It's so stupid, most of the time. Not to talk about how badass I am IRL (I'm not. I'm fat, old, slow and creaky), but I did spend a really good chunk of my life being like... obsessed with martial arts, weaponry and fighting... From a technical standpoint, I read logs and they're just so completely dumb. Moves that don't make sense. Moves that would leave someone so off balance or open to pre-emptive attack... it's like reading a story about two mall ninjas trying to outclass one another at their Movie-Try-Do art (they see it in a movie and try to do it).

Anyway, that being said... I accept it. I even participate in it. Because why the hell not? Also, because I'm playing a character who is better than me at something.

People should be allowed to play characters that are smarter/better looking/more charismatic than they are. We don't always have the capacity to reflect this. We don't have the right social know-how to say the clever things our characters would say. We don't have the technical know-how to say that our characters aren't doing a full spin to backhand someone in the face. Same thing, man.

Let people make a stupid pose. Forgive them. As long as they're trying, let's let them have their fucking fun, man. They deserve it as much as you do.

Former:
Dorian Richard-Hinton Porter (Vampire, The Reach/Currently at Reno)
Ulfrik (Viking Vampire, The Reach)
Orson Rand (Purified Immortal, The Reach)
Elliot Greyson (Werewolf, The Reach/Currently at Reno)
Takahiko (Mekhet Acolyte, Kingsmouth)
Tim Drake (HeroMux, CoMux)
Hunter Rose (HeroMux)
Exodus (HeroMux)
Roberto DaCosta (CoMux)
Dick Grayson (Brave New World)
Scott Summers (Brave New World)
Jack Marlowe/Spartan (Brave New World)
Storm Shadow (Brave New World)
Shredder (Brave New World)
Ryu (Brave New World)
Sunfire (Brave New World)
Ninjak (Brave New World)
Danny Rand/Iron Fist (Brave New World)
Sterling Archer (Staff Bit/Brave New World)
Matt Murdock (HeroMux, current)
Victor Creed (HeroMux, current)
Julian Blackwood (Vamp, Fallcoast)
Bailey Summerset (Vamp, Fallcoast)
Ishihara Ryuhei (Vamp, App'ed at F&L, and Reno 2.0. Never actually played on Reno)
Nightwing (United Heroes)
Black Panther (United Heroes)
Ishihara Ryuhei (Vampire, Fallcoast)
Ezra Brixton (Geist, Fallcoast)
Death (Staffbit, Descent)
Ryo, Zeku, Guy, Ky, Eliot, and a host of others (Match of the Millennium)

Current:
Gambit (Comic Adventures)
Hercules (Comic Adventures)
Miles Morales (Comic Adventures)
Akiyama Goro (City of Hope, on grid as Goro)

So, there's a new game out where you play a doctor in Victorian London, returning from World War I, who is promptly turned into a freshly minted vampire. He gets embroiled in supernatural skullduggery, and has to establish connections with his neighbors and such during the course of the game. It has a really very unique mechanic that pits gameplay directly against story in an antagonistic relationship. Essentially, in order to gain "XP" type stuff, you'll need to feed on your fellow Londoners, thus killing them. This allows you to get points to purchase skills and grow stronger. You can avoid doing this altogether, and play the game, but you will progressively find it harder and harder to advance because you're just woefully underpowered.

The other side of this is that the characters are all very human. They have dreams and hopes and foibles and nuances. They all have their own lives and issues and essentially sidequests for you that allows you to discover who they are, and through that, make London better, and try to stave off the chaos and the plague that's sweeping the city. The trick is that... the more you progress with a character, the more XP you get for killing them, basically. But this also cuts their storyline short.

So you have to choose. Do you end a storyline short for quick burst of XP? And if so, then... deviously, the game has been designed in such a way that you have to humanize your meal to get the most out of it. It truly brings to the forefront the dichotomy of the Man versus The Beast struggle that is supposed to be at the forefront of themes in regards to WoD/coD vamp.

I highly recommend this.

You can read a much more literate review here: Vampyr Review: The Story in Blood

Really, and this is true of all roleplay in general, as far as I am concerned, but... with people who might not have the ability to roleplay that social aptitude up to the general "your" standards, which are nebulous and subjective to begin with... the real trick is to be more cooperative. Not elitist. Instead of being like "Well, that line was lame, so I'm not going to respond to it", instead be like "So you rolled really high on that roll, so your character would know that telling me X or saying Y thing to me isn't going to get the sort of response your character wants. Instead, if you say this Z thing, it'll strike just the right chord, and get my character to thinking."

But all too often, people consider all rolled actions in a game to be adversarial. Hell, I approach PK-combat from a cooperative standpoint. It really does make the game go a lot better, and lets you learn to divorce your ego and just enjoy the ride for what it is. A story.

So, outta curiosity... basically any sort of negative review of a place gets moved out of an ad thread where potential players cannot necessarily see it? So all games, no matter how toxic, look like shining beacons of the community? Just want to be clear. Because the Hog Pit isn't seen by all people, and it seems jilted to diminish fairness in review. it's like saying that google makes you post to another site to place a 1 star review on a restaurant. On Google, you can only do 5 star reviews.

@auspice I think that, maybe, if someone other than someone gushing all the time about the game (indicating a clear bias), had made that call...

Alright, so there's been an explosion of activity in the Hog Pit over Fallout El Dorado and its batshit crazy owner. There is also a mass exodus of players from said game. Some others will remain because, simply put, it's the only game in town.

So lets make it not the only game in town.

Someone mentioned that the owner of the code is open to letting other people use it. Fallout is a series with a lot of opportunity for a lot of cool RP. It's also literally my favorite IP out there. I have Fallout tattoos. I'm just sayin'.

So here's my pitch. I don't have the time or desire to staff. I also don't really have the experience for it. BUT I am willing to pay to host it and whatever if someone else is willing to get the code up and running and people are willing to staff and run it. I'll happily just foot the bill. Honestly? I'll do this for an RE based game as well. Please note that this isn't about a grudge game or anything. It's about creating a haven where people can play in those worlds as they obviously want to, without having to deal with the stuff that comes with playing on an Elsa run game.

So if anyone is up for it, contact me and let me know how we can set this up.

Hey, I'm no staffer and this isn't exactly any sort of official advertisement for the game or anything like that, so pardon a lack of a pretty write up or something.

BUT!!

I am a long time player on Reno. I've had my times of activity and inactivity, but I think it's a pretty good game, generally speaking with some really good people running it. And now, we're starting up a lot of really cool plots and metaplots, and so here I am. Rock you like a hurricane.

I want to encourage this forward momentum in the game. I'd like to get some players around for antics. If you have old characters that have idled out or frozen, bring 'em back! If you haven't checked out Reno before, come do so! It's a really good time for getting into the game (again), as things are just kicking off and they're going to be shaken up pretty drastically, from the looks of it. Again, not staff, so I don't have any sort of inside view on this. Just the chatter.

Either way, there's a lot of opportunity for fun, cooperative-competitive gameplay, a ton of plot threads to explore (@Ganymede is rolling out these things like crazy) and some new shiny stuff in the works. Plus, most of my old crew is gone/scarce, and I could personally use a few new people to roll with. I'd like to have a small group of PCs to have mine (Dorian) work with in exploring some of the metaplot that's unfolding. Dorian's a fairly focused character, so it'd be nice to have some diversity to work within a group.

So come on over to reno.mechanipus.com port: 7639 and say hey. And even if you don't know WoD/CoD (which seems to be exceedingly rare around here), it's cool. Lots of friendly folks (like me!) who can help you make a character and learn the game.

@tragedyjones Better yet, go look up nude pics of the PB. That's what google is for!

@deadculture said in Eliminating social stats:

Bob can have his moment of triumph the moment he can use his character as described by his sheet for maximum effect. Otherwise, always replacing social acuity for the roll of a die means that not only are you unable to play the social character you've envisioned, you need to reconsider how you work your interactions with other people as a whole.
Last second edit to add: It also defeats the purpose of playing a social game to begin with. If you can't put in a pretty turn of phrase, what the fuck are you doing?

Bob can have his moment of triumph the moment he can use his character as described by the sheet...Isn't that what the roll is for? I mean, I hate to beat a dead horse, but until someone can accurately and technically describe their other actions in totality, this argument literally has no merit. If Bob rolls his dice, and he succeeds at the action, he is using his character as described by the sheet. Period.

Also: It defeats the purpose of playing any game if you have to be as good as your character, or better. We play games to be people that we aren't. We play characters to be better than we are. We're not here to play ourselves. We're not here to play mediocre.

I will follow @saosmash and say that I have found staff to be extremely and maliciously biased and pointed towards favoritism, which leads to an uneven play experience. You will either be accepted into the in crowd and find it a RP wonderland, or you will see it as the toxic environment that it is. What you do with that is your decision to make.

Poor Max.

How is he ever going to get the college education he needs to provide for his family if he's not allowed into the library to study? He can't be a gentleman and a scholar under these conditions.

Cyberpunk 2020, or something equivalent. Going back to the Shadowrun business, I would just like to see more straight up cyberpunk games where I can tell stories like Altered Carbon, Blade Runner and Deus Ex.

So I just app'ed Guy from Final Fight/Street Fighter. I need friends! And enemies! And Frienemies!

I'm looking for:

• Cody
• Haggar
• Dean
• Lucia
• Rolento
• Katana
• Hugo
• Poison (yessssss Poison.... >_>)
• Damnd
• ...the entire Mad Gear Gang

Some of the Mad Gear Gang would be cool to have going legit. Like Hugo and Poison did with their wrestling bit for awhile. It'd be cool to see what others might be up to, and see if Katana can draw them back in to Mad Gear, since I believe that's something that's being done in with Abigail atm.

Anyway! Come play with me!

@miss-demeanor I've never seen anything to that degree where I work. We also don't tend to hand people off if we can avoid it. That being said, as a quality assurance thing, we ARE told that, even if you state that you've taken a troubleshooting method, we're to try to repeat that method. The short truth of it is this: Users fucking lie. All the time. We can't trust you to have actually taken the steps. So we have to take the steps with you ourselves, so that our bosses don't breathe down our necks about QA and the like. ESPECIALLY if we are unable to resolve the issue and have to send it up the chain to a higher level support team. That being said, once one analyst has taken those steps with you and documented that in the ticket there should be no need for any other IT professional you speak to to ask you to repeat them again. As it's been documented that those steps have already been tried and failed to produce results.

Part of that whole making you do things over again... It does require some finesse on the part of the analyst, though. We certainly can't tell you that we think you're lying or incompetent. I find ways to smooth it over. Usually by mentioning that I want to see what exactly happens when we go through the steps again (as I am often remoted in on the computer while talking to someone). This doesn't make it seem like I'm trying to make you repeat the same thing, or that I don't believe you or think you're incompetent, but rather that I'm trying to see it for myself to get screenshots and document it it all in the ticket so I can show how neat and savvy you were to have done these things, even though they didn't work.

@Wolfs I think you have a few misconceptions about what I was app'ing for, and what my issue is. My issue is less that I "didn't get what I wanted". My issue is that policy only applies to certain people but not others. My issue was very clearly with how I was responded to with needless aggression. I was not saying a single thing about Cole having control of Halo. That was not reflected in my application at any point. I have no interest in Cole owning Halo. I don't want him to have control of it in the future. I'm not trying to even state a single thing about Halo, what it does or who runs it or anything. My app just says "Cole has money because he worked for these guys, and this company made this cool gun for him."

It still comes down to that Bruce Wayne and Ted Kord get to keep, specifically, "Wayne Enterprises" and "Kord Omniversal", which are both direct references to DC, which is what is being cited to deny the Cole app for "Halo Corporation". If the direct reference by name is the issue, why didn't Batman or Blue Beetle have to change "Wayne Enterprises" or "Kord Omniversal" to something else? Anything else?

I guess I'm going to have to scream it over and over. My issue isn't the details. It is about the lack of consistency. It is that some people are allowed to do things that others are not. My issue is that when questioned on that, staff decided that, rather than being reasonable, or forthright, they decided to be snide and catty. I don't feel that my first post was vague. It was exactly what my issue is. The details of the issue are irrelevant. It's also not to cause drama. This is constructive criticism. Be consistent. Don't be a dick when people ask you about why you're not being consistent.

It should also be noted that Kitten, AKA Red Queen, is also Vault Girl and Elsa, who you can read all about in numerous threads for Fallout: El Dorado, as well as Brave New World. Anyone who values integrity, honesty, and... I dunno... not being abused relentlessly and needlessly by a megalomaniac tyrant should probably steer clear if/when this game comes back.

@Tyche I'm going off of 2nd Edition rules here, so I hope that's what you're running. Anyway, no. You can't make an all out attack in a grapple. The reason is that once a grapple is established, you're no longer actually making attack rolls. On the next character's initiative in the grapple, all grappling parties make a roll of their strength+brawl. Whoever wins controls the grapple in that turn, and can choose a maneuver from the list of ones available. If they score a critical success with 5 or more, then they get to chose two maneuvers. But while these are strength+brawl rolls, they are not attack rolls. The are grapple check rolls, which is a subtle difference.

Hope this helps?

Coming in at the tail end of this thread here, and haven't, by any stretch, read the entire thing... but....

Fallout. For the love of Christ, I want a Fallout game so bad it makes my teeth hurt.

Ideally made using a variation of the actual games systems (the first couple), or maybe the tabletop adaptation that J.E. Sawyer (a dude who worked for Black Isle, and was a developer of Van Buren, which was later cannibalized for Fallout: New Vegas) made. Or Savage Worlds, maybe.

Either way, a Fallout game would seriously be the thing that gets me most excited about gaming again.

My former best friend's cat was sort of in love with me. When I'd come over, he'd stand up with his front end propped up on my legs, telling me that he wanted me to pick him up. Then, I'd have to kiss his nose. And then he'd have to get on my shoulders and headbutt my temple a few times, before he'd try to maneuver his fat clumsy ass around the back of my neck so he could lay down draped across my shoulders like some sort of cat boa.

My own cat just waited until I sat down, and then jumped up and crawled up my belly until he was in my face, and then would howl like a roaring lion at me for pets. Because he was a lover and a fighter.