Best posts made by Sunny

I told. My mother slapped me and called me a liar. Then fifteen years later when she was divorcing him, she asked me to come participate in the divorce stuff with that information. Then earlier this year, he was possibly dying, and she wanted me to come over to her house and sit with that side of the family to provide comfort, because of said possibly dying, and she is actually still mad at me for saying 'no' to that. I'm pretty okay with her being mad at me. I'm also pretty okay with how uncomfortable I know she is right now with everything going on in the news.

Meh. People are messed up in so, so many delightful ways.

@magee101 said in Crescent Moon Mux / New Orleans CoD Mux:

@skew said in Crescent Moon Mux / New Orleans CoD Mux:

@magee101 @Derp Yeah, boooo. Who likes being technically correct and going off what the websites say...

That's the problem with cultures, technically correct and actually correct can be vastly different. If they had called it CofD ten years ago, well we'd all call nWoD CofD, but they took too long, we have our own names for it, and it will probably never be widespread in the hobby that CofD=all nWoD material.

You are not the entirety of the hobby. Plenty of people use the appropriate terminology. You were wrong. Get over it.

@The-Tree-of-Woe said:

I never understood the train of thought that goes "I love this setting, and I'd love to play in it, except we need to throw out everything about it." Amber without the Princes and Princesses, Transformers without Optimus or Megatron (c'mon, it didn't even work when the actual SHOW did it), Star Wars without Luke, Leia, Lando et al.

I mean, I guess I understand that you don't want those characters usurping the story? But it's a little like throwing the baby out with the bathwater, innit?

The setting is divorced from the specific characters is divorced from the books' plot. To throw out some counter examples, why would you have a Firefly game without Mal? Why would you have a Pern game without F'lar? Mass Effect, without Shepherd?

I'm not interested in Cain's story or Corwin's story, I'm interested in a brand new story with brand new characters, exploring the world and learning things about the setting, how the world works, all of that fun stuff.It's set up as a very coherent way to handle a story that spans the complete multiverse in such a way that this week the Queen of Rebma is in her underwater Kingdom, and the next week she's decided she'd rather go fuck off and play space pirates, so here kid, have a crown and a Pattern.

Even to actually look at the RPG books that were produced for the series, one of the options presented is to just use the setting.

ETA: Using the characters from the books locks down a lot of your options. Throwing them out and saying 'Oberon exists, but none of the rest of them do, I've thrown out about half of the metaphysical stuff established so nobody actually knows how these things work or what REALLY happened in Chaos to make Oberon leave, go figure it out' turns into a fun, fun game.

@puppybreath

I'm so sorry.

Please please please do this game. I will come back to playing in public if you do, this game would make me so happy. I only ever got a taste of playing Buffy and I loved it, but for various reasons it didn't last. These days it interests me even more, but I dunno where to poke. Please! Yes!

@icanbeyourmuse said:

I'm in the party that players shouldn't be able to advance their chars for doing things for others. It is mildly annoying because they are getting oodles of XP when it doesn't have to do with their char.

It's a fair perspective. How do you propose to encourage a game-culture of doing things for other people, if you're not interested in incentives?

@ganymede

omg that is not what I meant. NOT WHAT I MEANT.

I will be playing here, if anybody wants to make characters with me. BUFFY. I have been waiting for a while.

Character XP
     Limited to specific character
     Flat rate awarded 1xp/week; the total of this will be tallied and every starting character will get the flat rate XP on top of their typical starting build points. This XP goes into their pool and can be used immediately, even before they go IC.
      Capped at 4/week (including flat gain)
     Ways to Earn:
          Goal -- See GMC for suggestions on how to write this up
          Failure
               Dramatic Failure (move failed roll to dramatically failed roll)
               Major Setback (major major loss, define this, earn 3 XP with this one, capping them for the week)
          Archetype
          Personal Story Completion
          Expend 2 player points
          Character Growth
          Character Learned
          Experienced major gain or loss
          Character reduced to disabled (0 health)
          Character makes significant choice
          Character confronts significant villain/enemy and they escape
     Spent-on-character cap of 425 Experience (possibly to increase yearly after 2 years, with adjustments to starting XP, game power level, and trade-in for all current unspent XP)
     Can be transferred to alts at 4:1 loss ratio (may not spend flat XP in this way)
     On-screen character death (not including suicide) will transfer unspent experience to a new character directly
          Intent: Giving non-dying characters closure 

**Player Points**
     Attached to the player (shared pool between characters)
     Weekly cap of 2, no total cap
     Earned by:
          Running Events
          Running PRPs
          Scene playing NPC from the background of another player's character
          Scene running slice of life for another player's character
          Writing article for IC News / OOC Wiki
          Playing with a new character their first week
          Create pre-gen/roster character fully (2 points)
          Newbie Help
          Narrating a scene
          Playing a recycled library/roster character for another player (2 points)
          Other as proposed (this list to grow as time passes)
          Building
     Traded 2:1 for Character Experience
     Traded 1:1 for Fate points (yes, these are lost weekly) to a cap of 10
     Traded for respec


**Fate Points**
     Remove/Refresh 12AM Monday; humans to 7, everyone else to 4
     Earned via invoking of complications or purchased using player points (purchased ones disappear as well)
          Quotable quotes
          Heroic Acts
          Bad things happen to good people
          Assisting someone else with tragedy
          Character confronts significant villain and they escape
     List additional ways to use (see Cinematic Unisystem's Drama Points)
          Heroic Feat
          I Think I'm Okay
          Plot Twist
               Edit Scene (Mutants Masterminds)
               Inspiration
          Instant Counter
          Righteous Fury
          Back from the dead
          Recover
     Max pool of 10 for any given scene (can't use more period)

Sorry about using that thing for this, but I couldn't get it to format right otherwise without more work than I'm willing to do. This is so totally just a work-in-progress, but I think it provides a framework for an incentive system that encourages what I want to encourage.

@aria Right?

god now I want to say udderly ridiculous

@Misadventure said:

In what format are they stored. Give an example, so people have a clue what sort of traits, and resolution you are using. Please quote one of the examples as closest to what is expected or provide a more accurate example.

What part isn't clear? Superhero games with narrative traits are pretty common; it's the way the genre mostly handles them, I think.

@RoguePotato How canon strict are y'all? Particularly once someone starts playing a PC?

@arkandel said in Table-top gadgets:

@lotherio said in Table-top gadgets:

@arkandel Sorry, I meant do the other players have their devices with them as in the OTT software/website might help. Could physical/digital dice by choice even; even slack has a dice app to OTT.

Yeah, we can assume they all have smartphones with them. Which I think will prove to be distracting but good luck enforcing my iron will there.

It's possible. Make the rule, and then stick to it. If someone pulls out a phone at the table, stop DMing until they put it away. Peer pressure will resolve this.

ETA: It literally took only half of a session for me to nip this problem in the bud. I realized it was an issue, I told them what I was going to do, and then I stuck to it. We stopped having the problem. When somebody had a thing going on that needed them to be able to stay engaged with the phone, they just let us know and I said 'OK' and nobody bitched I let X have his phone.

@packrat

I love your cat.

From on the game -- and if you're going to respond, it needs to also be on the game, since that's where I'm keeping track of it. But! Current status report:

So, this is where we're sitting and what I need, right now:

1. Grid -- I will be creating a map and digging the skeleton; that is one of my two current projects.

2. Policies -- #2 on my projects. Currently determining what I want to talk about with a group, and what I want to simply decide on.

3. Code -- I can probably figure out how to do this if needs be, but I know the group of you are probably better suited. I'd like to get Theno's graciously offered chargen installed, as well as some of the standard existing packages as-is. Once what already exists is in place, then I'll need to look at what the game doesn't have, and we'll need to figure out who can do the things since I probably shouldn't be asking Ixy to do all the things for me all the time (not that I'm going to stop him from volunteering, but I can't expect!).

4. Subject Matter Experts (SME): We need to determine them. Currently, we have vampire, werewolf, and demon that are published; Changeling will be following soon. I'm going to be acting as SME for M/M+/Immortal, but I need an SME for all of the things. Right NOW, we are going to address all of the game lines; we'll be determining together (feel free to post your input now) which we're going to include and convert if necessary. So, I need SME's for: Vampire, Werewolf, Mage, Promethean, Changeling, Sin-Eater, Demon, Changing Breeds, Hunter, Mummy, Beast(?), and then of course I will just do m/+/immortal. Volunteer for multiple if you want; I'll end up assigning them. Anything that does not have a SME by the time we're really rolling probably won't make it into the game. We need to have it now just because we're going to need to work things into the story, whether or not we use them.

The role of an SME is to be consultation for rules, bringing things that need to be HR'd to my attention, and to collaborate with me (and others) for their starting story. It is in no way a 'sphere wizard' sort of deal. This, like all commitments right now, is for development purposes only, and does not imply that you're agreeing to staff when development is done. I'd also like an SME for Code, Building, an...no, that's it.

4. News files: will be waiting on #2 and #4.

5. Wiki is covered by a wonderful lady who is wonderful, I'll let her introduce herself though. 6) Suggestions for staffing name themes would be welcome.

6. Game NAME is going to be Dust to Dust, and we'll be set in Bay City, Washington State. It is a fictional city on par with Seattle; our Seattle is going to be considerably smaller than the real one.

7. Story. I will need help crafting the main story arc; I work the best when doing so via a discussion. I am FOR SURE kidnapping ES for this, but anyone else can volunteer as well. Keep in mind that participating in the crafting means that you'll be spoiled for a lot of it.

8. Development of 'This is How the World Is'. Hand in hand with #7. Things like 'What is the god machine' and 'what determines if someone is going to awaken', and so on. I have some ideas, I'd like to bounce them around some. This will, of course, be a spoilers section. HOWEVER, it is unlikely that anything determined in this step will actually come out in play directly, but having things consistent behind the curtains is important.

There's some good starting points. There'll be more as we end up drilling down further! But this is where we are right now.

@Misadventure

See, for me, the operative word involved as far as the system's flaws is 'Cinematic'. It's not supposed to mimic actual reality, the laws of physics, or anything along those lines. It's supposed to mimic movie/television/fiction/entertainment reality, which is significantly different. I expect (though this is just knowing the personalities here) that some of the things that you view as a bug (design flaw), I view as a feature. The system is for over the top movie madness, and within that context it works very well. The game simply encourages/supports a specific playstyle.

Cinematic fell apart for me because it's NOT designed to do Buffy. Classic example is that any group of opponents can waste your defense and then dog pile you. If the whole system was full of tricks like this, that would be a point of play, but as is they are pitfalls where the GM realizes they have to carefully construct every combat so as to not destroy a character.

One, that's part of the GM's job, and two, the GM creating encounters where the enemy is exploiting flaws in a system rather than behaving reasonably means the group is playing the wrong game. You don't play Cinematic Unisystem like you would D&D or even WoD.

What Buffy did as her show progressed is way above and beyond what any of the PCs are going to start out like. Angel ended up actually balancing things out a little better with the various traits and things available. Witchcraft, which is not the Cinematic system (but is Unisystem) is a significantly different game that superficially looks quite similar. It removes much of the cinematic aspects, putting it back along the same level as WoD, except for including specific rules as part of the system to make your own stuff.

@arkandel said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

@aria said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

If it would make the retail workers feel better, I will tell my very funniest retail story ever, which involves end-of-night inventory at a friend's place of employment. I will warn, however, that said friend was working at a fetish shop at the time, so.... it's super, super NSFW.

Y/N?

What's the goddamn chance we'll say (N)?

Come on. This is us.

Right? Does anyone NOT want to hear the story? lol. Please, @aria, share! If it's so NSFW you're worried about it, use a spoiler tag!

I wish you all the luck in the world with this. Still sad I was personally specifically excluded for reasons I do not understand, but good luck with the game!

@saosmash Clearly. Mutter.

--

If anyone WANTS to get involved with the current metaplot stuff and is running into roadblocks, please please feel free to reach out to me. I might not end up being the one helping directly, but I am more than willing to make connections between people and help figure things out OOCly. Mail / page on game or PM here or w/e. I'm pretty sure this goes for everybody else piping in here.

@auspice

That's so fucked up. I'm sorry.

Removing my griping as the circumstance has been resolved by @2mspris.