Posts made by Sparks

One thing I do think D&D 5e works really well for is avoiding overtuning encounters when you have coded combat.

There's a problem that crops up on Arx where you have to eyeball a group of adventurers when making a coded combat mob, guess how hard it should be, drop the mob, and then potentially watch the mob steamroller them (when you didn't WANT the mob to be quite that deadly)... or watch them steamroller the mob (when you wanted the mob to be a challenge).

5e Challenge Rating is a well-understood mathematic; by having your mob spawns based on challenge rating, you could easily look at the party present, go, "Okay, they're these spread of levels, that means for an encounter I want to be hard but survivable, the challenge rating of the mobs should total X." You could even have code to calculate the encounter difficulty for you!

@kanye-qwest said in D&D 5E:

Once @pax is done with her exploration room system for Evennia, a game that automates adventuring would be totally doable!

The trick is having enough templates for the exploration/adventuring system to actually generate variety.

I don't think equal spotlight distribution is feasible on large games, for a variety of reasons. I mean, no one should be excluded from having their turn in the spotlight if it comes along, but you're never going to be able to ensure every one of 300 players has a chance to shine... and if you do, you're going to run into "you got a chance to shine once, a year and a half ago, so you can't go on plots anymore", which is a surefire way to burn out otherwise active players (who are the ones who stir up RP when you aren't GM'ing).

It's hard even in individual scenes, honestly; when I GM scenes, I try to ensure there's something for everyone to do -- everyone gets an opportunity to influence the outcome, gets a chance to let their skills shine. And that can be difficult when you have a group of seven people and three hours to run an adventure for them, but still possible; it's not really possible when you're running a giant mass battle scene for 40 people and don't want it to take multiple days.

I think what you can aim for is "everyone has opportunities to influence the game world, even if it's part of a larger action". And if someone comes up with an interesting idea that fits the game world and has a chance of letting some new folks have the spotlight, be prepared to run with it.

I think the best you can do when you are dealing with 300-some players is seed storylines in 3 or 4 different places, and try to nudge people together to act on it. But if someone doesn't act on it (or misinterprets a clue/vision and heads off in some other wild direction, which has happened), the people who do act on it are likely to be the ones who play a role in resolving that plotline. Or the people who pick up the clues and run with them. But everyone should have the opportunity to do such.

That said, there is a tool on Arx which returns a list of characters who've never had staff GM attention, which gets used to try to seed new storylines to people who might otherwise be struggling to find a path to involvement. I think that's a very useful tool to have, since it helps you find the people who might otherwise be just doing slice-of-life RP and wondering how to get involved.

This is, mind you, just my $0.02 (plus state sales tax where applicable).

@arkandel said in General Video Game Thread:

https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17130056/telltale-games-developer-layoffs-toxic-video-game-industry

Sometimes I miss working in game development.

Then I read articles like this and remember all the bad parts.

@auspice said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@sparks said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@auspice I feel you on the migraine complaint today. So much.

The HVAC and florescent lights make me want to cry today.

Florescent lights are the fucking worst.
How have we not gotten rid of the things?

Why do we have lights that make noise?

@auspice I feel you on the migraine complaint today. So much.

The HVAC and florescent lights make me want to cry today.

@auspice said in What's missing in MUSHdom?:

D&D is just such a big, complex beast. However, the more I think about it... It probably has a lot of database support natively, which is what I'd want if I was developing a D&D system for MU*. My biggest gripe with TT systems on MUSH/MUX is putting attributes on code objects. They get so messy.

But if you could put them in a SQL DB that the game calls? It'd be so much cleaner. And mulling... with the web portal, Ares has a lot of support for databases already. So it MIGHT be doable. I just don't know Ruby enough to say for sure, it's just more a gut instinct call, I guess?

Ares is based atop a redis database, while Evennia is based atop Django's ORM backed by either SQLite, Postgres, or MySQL. Depending on how you wanted to implement things, either would work for what you're discussing.

For me, 5e has just the right amount of crunch-to-story ratio. You have enough crunch and mechanics to keep things interesting, but its streamlined enough that the story keeps moving at a decent clip regardless.

As a former Pathfinder player, going back to Pathfinder after playing 5e feels (to me) like you end up spending a lot more time rolling dice and a lot less time actually advancing the campaign in a meaningful manner.

There's other bits too—they've done careful balancing of the classes, so that regardless of what you play you can still have an interesting and meaningful role to play in the party—that contribute to my fondness for 5e, but it's really the crunch-to-story-advancement ratio that won me over.

This isn't to say that Pathfinder's flawed or somehow a lesser system, just that for me 5e seems the best D&D (or D&D-adjacent) system I've yet played.

Saying you should put other people's fun before your own is a little unfair to players in general. When I think "try to think of other people's fun", I generally mean just to try not to stomp on other people's fun, so long as that fun still fits within the theme. In general, my rule of thumb for how I try to play is just "try to make the scene interesting and enjoyable for everyone involved".

(Including if I get a scene with a staff-controlled NPC; if the staffer is taking the time to RP an NPC with me, they should get to have fun with it too. Rather than just me trying to be 'push button, dispense plot plz.')

@scar said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

The metaplot secrets on Pugmire would probably be really, really cute.

"You are a good dog. A good, good dog."

@cupcake said in Pineapple on Pizza:

If you've ever been in Seattle, you know Pagliacci's is the way to go.

Pepperoni + Pineapple = BEST.

Co-signed.

Pepperoni, pineapple, and black olives = the pizza of the gods.

@misadventure This is a bribe to try to finish 2.0 faster, isn't it.

@misadventure I'm more of a tea person. Coffee is a last resort fuel.

@thatguythere said in RL things I love:

I am just intrigued by a Pearl marrying a Pearlie, that could lead to almost as much confusion as when two friends got married, Christopher and Christine but both went by Chris.

I know a couple who are named Loren and Lauren.

I love when modern technology provides the best headlines: https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2018/3/7/17092334/amazon-alexa-devices-strange-laughter

I mean, it's ominous, but the headline is great!

Since the clean modern rewrite I've been working on is Atlantis 2.0, the 0.8 and 0.9 version get referred to as 1.x.

I'd need to see the world files (or screenshots of the non working event) to see what's wrong, I'm afraid.

After previous conversations, I sort of think the best way to handle it is that you can affect how other people perceive you, but not necessarily other things. I.e., I can convince you to perceive me as trustworthy (and possibly even 'more trustworthy than James over there' during an argument where James and I are both trying to sway your opinion), but I cannot necessarily convince you to change your own beliefs and positions. I can convince you to think I'm an honorable individual rather than a scoundrel, but I cannot convince you to change your own world-view.

To use peasoupling's example, Felicia would not be able to convince the faithful monk to join an orgy for the glory of Satan. But she might be able to convince the faithful monk that she's trustworthy, and then slowly begin her campaign of gradual corruption.

That allows for social actions that make sense. "I want to know this secret", you aren't playing "convince the person to tell you the secret", but "convince the person you're trustworthy and can know the secret." Maybe the person still refuses, because it's important to them to tell no one—not even trustworthy folks—but it gives a hook that's probably easier to agree on.

@thenomain said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@tnp said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

@buttercup That dog looks like Hitler.

You just invoked Godwin's Dog.

I think you meant Dogwin's Law.