Posts made by Sunny

@Jeshin

Nope, not staffer or owner. Just a very enthusiastic player that may or may not have had something to do with the sudden spike in numbers on the game.

Tomorrow night at 7 EST is the royal wedding between the Dauphine and the Royal Commander. It should prove to be a ton of fun; everybody involved knows the value of getting to the fun parts of RP. Should see a lot of the heavy hitters there, if you have a character and are looking to make contacts.

Next week (I'm not sure which day off the top of my head) is the Big Parliament Session with at least one item on the agenda that will probably shape some major things going forward. I really can't say more than that. If you have a PC that is Comte or above, BE THERE to vote. If you think you might want to come but your PC is not nobility, PLEASE page me (Emma or Evelyn mostly) and I will find someone to sponsor you to come in with them, if I can't do it myself. Those below Comte can attend, but they don't get a vote,. On that same vein, though, again, we can find people to sponsor others to speak if you want to participate.

In that vein, I'm looking for a whole lot of characters to fill out L'Agnace. I have a list. Contact me on-game if you need a good, fun place to hook in. We are the first province to have fully mobilized for war, which is hilarious for a whole lot of reasons. The first being, of course, that we aren't actually at war currently.

I'd also dearly love to get a couple of heavy hitters in on the Sommerville side of things; they're the Chalasse rivals for the Sovereign Duc title; we got it back from them very very recently, and the whole situation is messy and wonderful and it would be awesome if I had a strong opponent willing to go toe to toe with Eve for the title.

Once the wedding and the Parliament session are done, I'll be back to doing events of some sort every other weekend. The next one I'm planning on doing (and have started the groundwork for) is a Tourney, which given current events is probably the best thing I can do. There's also going to be a hunt in the near future, and I'm entirely willing to entertain any ideas folks have that are not 'Oh look, Emma is having another party'. Not that the parties are bad -- we've had a lot of quiet politicking at them -- but it's still fun to have more variety.

@Jeshin

There's a huge gap between participating in the community and looking down your nose at it. If you're not attempting to do the latter, you should probably check your tone. As for your bit of irony...well. Someone else can point out the really, really, really funny part there.

@Jeshin said:

It is just that they do not fall under the purview of games which we would list and give a sub-forum.

Why are you here? I mean, everything I've read from you has the same air as this singular sentence.

Hint: Do not go into a vegetarian cafe and advertise your butcher shop. At length. And then tell the vegetarians that they're doing it wrong according to your standards.

If you are, by your rules, actively excluding the community that makes up the bulk of the people around these parts, you're in the wrong place. You can argue an intent at inclusion all you want (oh, it's not stopping you from using our forums or contributing!) but why the fuck would we want to do that? We have this place. We have a community. We've been going strong for plenty of time, even if it hasn't been on this site.

You keep saying 'I'm not saying games without these things are bad, but...' It's the 'but' there that's killing you with a lot of this audience. Well, that and the condescension that drips from every other word. Yay, you encourage all of the text based games out there even if they don't fit. DO I GET A GOLD STAR?!?!?!

Our games don't fit your standards, for the most part. I'm planning on one of the most heavily automated soft-coded systems for one of my games, and Smoke still wouldn't qualify. Trying to talk any of us into changing our games to suit your site is silly at best and offensive at worst.

ETA: If this were the hog pit I would have added quite a bit to this. There are a couple of choice words I'd be throwing around. I'll just let everyone use their imaginations. We do that, around here.

@Jennkryst said:

Randomly, if MUSHes and MUXes are the same, then why doesn't combat on... any mush ever, work like on BTMux?

From a user standpoint, they are similar. From a code standpoint, there are differences. Also, we're not all playing Battletech.

Alright, lovely people. I am going to do this. I'm not going to start on it right this instant; I need to finish getting back up on my feet so that I don't randomly turn into a lunatic on people before settling down again, but the last of that was dealt with today and should be worked out all the way soon (just some silly little medical stuff).

What I need from folks is a PM here / an email to jmotteler (gasp) at comcast (eyeroll, they're what we have) dot net. I need the best way to contact you (an e-mail would be great, so I can send out a mass message, never fear, I know how to use bcc!), and what particular contributions are being offered. @Surreality, I'll definitely take you up on the building help, and @Thenomain once I have a site set up if you could just put in what you have for the chargen system that would be phenomenally appreciated. @EmmahSue, if once I get the ball rolling on this you could do some brainstorming sessions with me for metaplot/history, I need your brainz. @VulgarKitten, if you think you can work with me (I have no concerns about working with you), I'd be happy to have you on board. I am certain that I can find things I need help with.

I do not actually need any coding help that I am aware of at this point; if I do need it, I'll let folks know. I can't quite tell who was offering concrete help otherwise and who was just jumping around, otherwise.

What I am going to need are Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). I am very good with 1.0; TR switching to 1.5 broke my brain and I ran away screaming. So someone really is going to need to help me get out through the gate. I get the setting/fluff/etc nooooo problem, but I have to be taught the specifics of how the rules work, even if it's an example combat. Beyond that, I have very little investment in any sphere but mortal/+/immortal; I'm going to need SMEs for all of the Big Splats, which I will be following in Eldrich's shoes on opening as they come out (though I am going to want to bring forward support for Geist if it's not on the horizon, because I love the sphere so much).

Mage is going to be a significant issue/sticking point for me, and I am REALLY going to need a SME there in particular if I want to think of including them.

As far as flakes go, I love them. It's fine. I'm over the break staff up by sphere classic model of staffing. I think it does more harm than good, and ultimately results in people who are great at one thing having to also do things they're bad at because it's part of their job. Some of my favorite people (you know who you are, not naming names this time) completely flake out fairly regularly, and I think a lot of it has to do with people being responsible for more than they're able to take on. Sphere wiz is like, the shittiest job ever. Screw that.

With a non-sphere staffing model, it compensates for people wandering off and back fairly well, I think. We'll have SMEs, but that will be reserved for things that actually NEED them; otherwise we'll share the workload. I honestly think that with a good team, that will make the world easier.

I am planning on using some of the models I've developed for Smoke and Mirrors: A Victoriana Game (essentially the goal is to automate everything that does not require judgment, and remove as many barriers to play as possible -- a review system after the fact, rather than an approval system, for example).

@Luna said:

@Sunny They gave me so much Meloxicam one time that I started puking blood. Pain meds around here are a big no no. It didn't help anyway. Is the patch lidocaine? Because they came out with a generic of that. It works pretty good for some things. Narcos don't work super well on me anyhow, but I swear they would rather shut down people's livers than give those.

Be sure to check out good rx (I think it's goodrx.com I use the app) and Costco/Sams club. You don't need a membership. I'm sure you know but I'd rather over share than under share.

Yeah, the new one is lidocaine, yes. The generic version is still a couple of hundred dollars, unfortunately. Which is much more affordable than Butrans and also non-narcotic, but...well, hopefully soon.

@Luna said:

@Sunny Hang in there. I'm so sorry and this is super fucking shitty. And I know breathing meds are CRAZY expensive. I hope things get better soon! Kick ass and take names!

Thankfully the 'keeping me alive' medication is out of pocket affordable. The big one right at the moment is that I can't afford any of my pain management. We were going to be trying this super cool local anesthetic patch thing for my foot that meant I would not have to consume ANY sort of narcotics at all. Well, we will still be trying it, once things get squared away. But the pain patches? Yeaaaaah, good luck with that. I can't take over the counter medication for any of it, either. It's all apparently too much of a risk for me except Tylenol, which I pretty much have to OD on to get any relief from it.

Were I to commit to herding ferrets (and only to herding ferrets) for an nWoD game with multi-sphere support and a higher power level, who would be interested in a- helping me get it set up, and b- helping to run it? I'm not particularly interested in anything but administrative assistance (my love is all being poured into my Victoriana game and then the game I am playing on), but I am damn fine at herding ferrets.

I'm thinking probably a 'replacement' city for Portland, or possibly bringing Bay City back for the lulz. Whatever, it would certainly be a metropolis made up, but perhaps based on a real city somewhere just to ensure we have some material to work with. West Coast definitely; if I did it up in my general neck of the woods (Washington Puget Sound region) it would mean that I know pretty much all the local myths and I'm entirely familiar with the local tribes and state politics (shoot me).

Saying 'me me me' is not a solid commitment at this point; I'm not even going to think about doing this shit without a solid group. But hey, might as well put my money where my fucking mouth is.

I said this one before, and recently, too, but today was a good reminder.

I hate working for the government, particularly when I end up having to choose between being homeless and doing the right thing. I HATE IT.

Also, jackasses in the office of human resources that don't actually do their job, resulting in me losing my medical coverage and having to cancel both my respiratory therapy AND cardiologist appointments, as well as not being able to get any of these lovely medications that are KEEPING ME ALIVE refilled. Don't qualify for state assistance 'cos I'm back to work.

I swear, if that asshole doesn't satisfy me tomorrow one of a couple of things is going to happen. Possibly several of these things.

First is demanding a meeting with my sup, her sup, his sup, and a union rep, to explain how royally and illegally this asshole has fucked up. Second is filing an actual worker's compensation claim, which I had thus far avoided doing because it's going to be a fight, and three, getting a damn attorney. I have the established case law in hand now, too. My job itself has repaired itself and has been fantastic, which is amazing, but the agency itself is trying so hard to screw me over. I dunno, maybe they want the lawsuit of them being responsible for me dying on the job.

@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.

We also tend to disagree on a lot of these sorts of things; we're two people that are very heavily weighted at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of our approaches to gaming and perspectives. I come from a heavily no-stats-at-all roleplaying background, so the bar for what I view as crunchy is significantly different than @Misadventure's view. It's the same viewpoint sort of with this, it's just on a different scale.

This, though, this was just "I was talking about this and @Misadventure was talking about that".

@Rook

I think it's a great idea for you to explore further, and better get a handle on the cons as well as the benefits. Some things to think about:

What behavior would this policy discourage?

What happens if the playerbase doesn't buy in?

What other behaviors are important to you to encourage?

Does this system accomplish encouraging those behaviors as well, or are you willing to sacrifice them for the stated goal?

Really, it's just a fundamental difference of opinion. I, having like 3 games that use this system, find it easy to create balanced things with. It's not AS crunchy as HERO (HERO does it better and is superior in pretty much every way, good luck getting people who don't already know it to use it on a mush), but @Misadventure is comparing it to other systems, while I was looking at it in terms of how much crunch is necessary for the style of the setting.

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.

@Arkandel said:

I suppose I don't understand the reasoning. Someone who is more able to get into interesting scenes (due to OOC connections, being a good roleplayer, having a great reputation) will also probably get more beats than someone who doesn't possess those qualities. Is that unfair?

As for running 4 PrPs in a day, unless they're gaming the system for XP by running faux-plots, I don't see how that's sustainable. Citation needed for even empirical evidence, please.

/raises a hand

I did it. Sustainable? Oh fuck no. But I had some things going for the Three Oaks crowd (shout out to my peeps) at one time and there was a particular day that like, everyone was available. For different plots. -.-

@Roz I was getting between 1-3 XP per scene (not per plot), and tore people up pretty regularly (which meant higher danger level so I more often than not everyone got 3xp). Plus I got the initial tier XP, then I started getting the monthly tier XP when they switched to that system.

@Roz

Oh god, I got SO MUCH XP with Soleil@TR for running plots and STing and throwing events and the like. While their system is set up to catch people up eventually, I was at one point HUNDREDS of experience ahead of people that started around the similar time, just for my STing.

@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?

@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.

Whatever behavior you reward, that is the behavior that you will get.

People are reward focused. Incentives really should be present, and present in such a way as to encourage and support the OOC culture you want to foster on the game, essentially. If you don't care if people run stories themselves, don't reward them. My suggestion would be (and the system I'm going to be implementing for my game) is to keep most of the incentives people can earn to be something other than direct experience for their characters. Give them Monkey Points. You can spend 10 Monkey points for 1 XP, or you can use a single Monkey Point as a lot of systems use fate points.

Temporary rewards, basically; they get to keep it until they use it, but once they use it it's gone and they're no more bloated than their compatriots. So they get something that is valuable, does give them advantage, but it's not add-a-dot-to-this-skill-forever, rather 'add a dot to this skill for this scene'. Cap how many can be used in any given situation, and go.