Posts made by surreality

@the-sands Not so much.

And definitely not when the author is sitting right there and can tell them: "Knock it off, you're being obnoxious, deliberately obtuse asshats," when people get into it. Or, you know, if it actually is too vague, there's a snowball's chance in hell of it actually being properly and promptly clarified in the direct source material, rather than in some rambling forum thread from six years ago, twelve pages into the same stupid argument, after which someone says: "Just go whichever way you want on it for your table," -- which is roughly as helpful as a jug of salt water to someone dying of dehydration.

@the-sands That'd be the biggie, yes. WoD sucks so, so hard for this hobby in particular (from my perspective) that it boggles my mind sometimes how widespread it is.

@seraphim73 And this kind of hassle and head-desk-inspiring circle-jerking is exactly why a number of us are interested in writing our own damn systems instead of using WoD.

At least:

1. You know who to yell at if the reality and the wording don't match.
2. Ideally, that person will give enough of a damn to fix it in one direction or another.
3. The author's sitting right there and can answer you so you're not guessing blindly in the dark about 'what was the author's intent', which a lot of this is boiling down to (again, surprise surprise).

I'd hazard to say that discussing stats initially outlined in a way that isn't how WoD works (even if they are the WoD attributes as the example set), by default we are explicitly talking about something nonWoD, so the hyperfocus on WoD is doubly sighsome.

@faraday said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

@the-sands said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

In other words, most games are designed around the idea that if you 'should' know how to do something you already do. You don't lack the points to buy everything you 'should' have because you've already got everything you 'should' have for free.

I'm just saying that if you actually read the game system's descriptions, that's actually simply not true.

FWIW, I'm not posting much due to project hackville, but I'm on the same page here.

I think a major step people can take in development on this front is to actually define what I'd essentially call a 'level zero' that represents standard baseline knowledge in that area without points being spent.

(Granted, I am also a crackpot that's looking at a means by which people can take negative modifiers to a specific task to actively really really suck at some aspect of that thing as a tradeoff for a minor boost to something else equally specific in the same skillset, so I should probably shut up, because all the dedicated min-maxers probably just collectively made some involuntary and very socially inappropriate noises just reading that.)

@arkandel You can kinda address that with a hybrid method, though. Keep the benefit of the 'tooltip' descriptor, but instead of:

• 4
  or
• Good

have:

• 4 (Good)
  or
• Good (4)

That's the direction I lean on it, anyway. You get the benefits of mechanical transparency and RP-reference guidance that way.

@sockmonkey FS3 does this to some extent, though it's a 1-1 range instead of a variable range, if I'm reading this right.

It's something about @faraday's system that I really like, and may shamelessly steal, because I think it makes a good guideline.

I've considered some things like this as well, with the range examples. I am forever on the fence, though, because I weigh these two things:

1. 1-1 as numbers is easy to understand and you can have a standard template of 1 = Bad, 2 = Average, etc. (more or less WoD style) that could display the words on the sheet either alongside or in place of the numbers. This is much easier to learn and comprehend if it's a completely new system to the player.

2. [range] is more realistic, and could cover more incremental raises rather than saving up to buy something on a point by point basis, which FS3 also does. It's less inherently visible player-side, though, in a way that will make things easier for some, and confuse and frustrate others. FS3 has a 'progress toward next level' marker of sorts that helps prevent this, since 'word levels' cost different amounts to raise up to.

I decided to stick with #1 for the time being for my dev stuff, with flat raise costs (CoD style), even if I like #2 and see a lot of merit in it.

I went with a much broader range of more specific attributes in cluster groupings as my means of reducing min-maxing to some extent; sometimes the specific attribute is going to apply, others, the average of the attributes in the cluster will. I picked this ultimately because I'm working on this stuff specifically for this hobby, rather than tabletop or a more automated setup. (I actually think what you're describing would be completely amazing for a very automated setup.)

The design goals I am focusing on are these: 1. needs to be easy to pick up and understand since it'd be new to literally everyone, and flat costs and basic 1-1 ranges reduce confusion; 2. allowing for specificity creates more niches for the larger number of players in a persistent world vs. tabletop -- you aren't just 'smart', you can define in what way you're smart, etc. -- because having some additional distinctions there sheet-side is a helpful tool, and gives people a little non-destructive built-in 'snowflake' factor with the broader range/ability to be more specific. (There's basically enough of them that even with a pile of XP, it'd be hard to be good at everything, and everything that's there is going to matter in some way.)

@cupcake Lyrics make sense. I totally get why they made the choice. Conceptually, it's a great fit. Musical style is jarring as heck, though, even though I absolutely see why they'd connect the references.

It's one of those 'idea: A+++', 'actual output: D-' problems, minor as it is.

@cupcake I kept liking what I saw, but the 'Hurdy Gurdy Man' theme broke it somehow for me in a really jarring way. Lyrics make sense, but stylistically it just broke the headspace in a way that was... weird. It was jarring enough it'd knock what I'd just seen out of my head and break any and all coherence in a way no musical selection ever has in TV or a movie before.

I need to try again and just make a point of speeding through that bit, I think.

@tinuviel +job/deny ###=Needs more cowbell, but less bullshit.

@tinuviel Still, no public fucking would probably opt out half the current population.

@tinuviel No more fucking on the beach though.

The weredolphins would be constantly in a state of protest.

@kitteh said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

So if people want games with social rolls, game designers need to go back to the drawing board and 2.0 their whole concept of these game systems. Nearly everything we play is a WoD-clone, with the same stat-skill conventions and minimal focus on social stuff beyond 'maybe you can put one virtue and vice.' These arguments will always go back and forth fruitlessly under these conditions.

I won't go into any real details of it now, but 'having that on the sheet' is something I'm tinkering with in the notWoD OT/OS project.

It was one of the very first considerations, actually.

It does work both ways, though, in some respects: while there's some stat things that give you what are 'core ideals/drives/haven't decided quite what to call them yet', they can work 'against' someone, too. If someone took something like "I will not allow my children to come to harm," they get a big bonus to resist anything that'd make them do harm to their children.

A person who tries to make them do something else that might be objectionable -- say, 'go kill that creepy molester in the van who has been eyeing your kids' -- may get a bonus on their attempt to convince that character to do it, for the same reason. It will be more compelling to them in a way that someone without the same core personal ideal has, even if they both have the same innate reaction to the idea of killing someone generally.

I think it helps people generate story that is a lot more in tune with the character's identity as the player envisions it, even if some of the story is horror, or involves Doing Bad Things, etc.

@faraday That's actually taking it a step further along the same principle, really.

The point I'm making on the whole isn't a 'this is how you fix it', but a 'this is the most broken aspect of this people have to confront'. Namely, people don't even get to the different kinds of guns point. When it comes to social, they want 'point a stick and say "bang"' to accomplish the job for them, when that's something we'd consider completely absurd (even if we thought any gun would work for any shot, we know we at least need a gun).

@ixokai said in Social 'Combat': the hill I will die on (because I took 0 things for physical combat):

Social is more nuanced then 'can aim and fire a gun'. Social involves a lot of particulars. I've had more then one woman or utterly incompatible character try to seduce a gay character of mine in the past: I'm not joking, not making euphemisms. I've had a lady roll seduction on my queer ass.

This is always a good example. (Not trying to single you out here.) How differently would you react if, instead of that character trying to get in your pants for info, they sent an NPC (or a PC they convince to do it) to get into your pants for info that's male?

I'm betting hard that there's a much better chance of you being willing to go along with that (which would be the same for most folks, I'd think).

That high social score should inform female seductress 'this isn't going to work due to improper equipment, I need the right tool for this job to get what I want' just like high firearms is going to inform ace sniper that a twig and the word 'bang' isn't going to blow a hole in someone; they also need the right tool for that job.

The problem is rarely purely a matter of agency, it's a matter of how much more agency is removed in the way many people handle social rolls, and have historically handled them.

Can second the inker thing. Friend of the family worked for Marvel and DC as a stringer doing pencils or inks for folks from time to time back when, and so on, as a 'we need somebody to fill in for a few pages to make deadline' kinda guy.

@roz Yeah, that one was me, I think. I'm mostly staying out of this one, though.

I think it was pointing a stick at someone's chest and saying 'bang' and expecting it to work or something similar, but yes.

Few people object to 'can be influenced'.

People object to 'can be influenced in a hopelessly unreasonable manner' in the social arena in precisely the same way as they would object to someone pointing a stick at someone's chest, saying "bang", and expecting it to blow a hole through them in the same way a shotgun would if this were to occur in combat.

This has nothing to do with dice pools whatsoever and everything to do with absurdity. The 'my medical dice won't bring someone back from the dead!' example is also excellent. The other I like to use is 'it does not matter what your dice say, you cannot throw a baseball and hit the moon'.

These limits exist in the physical and mental aspects of the game, too. People are just generally not stupid enough to try them.

Many people refuse to recognize the bounds of absurdity in the same way in social rolls, and too many people have tried to pull the 'I fixed your car and made my roll so now you have to fuck me' when, hey, maybe I hate that car and wanted it dead so I could buy a new one, and fixing it would make me frustrated and angry with them instead. Similarly, the cheap pick-up line approach simply is not going to work on a nun no matter how hot you are, but people demand that it must.

In short: fuck those people.

If you need to have the understanding that you can't shoot someone with a stick and the word 'bang' for that firearms pool to do you any good, it's the same with social foo.

That means that, yes, you would probably have a better understanding of how to approach that other person to get your attempt to work, in the same way that 'must have a gun and not a stick and the word "BANG!"' is part of the fundamental knowledge inherent to successful use of the firearms skill.

It also means that, like the firearms expert knows they need a gun, the subterfuge expert has a better understanding of how they must appeal to their target to be believed. Neither gets to just 'make up' how they want this to happen, however we see people do this with social rolls all the time, and then demand that not only does it work, it works the way they want it to no matter how impractical or unrealistic the approach they chose is, even if it is just as impractical and unrealistic a means of impacting their target as the stick and "bang".

As a result, the way many people have traditionally approached social rolls is fundamentally broken, because they haven't traditionally been held to the same practical standard as 'no, you can't just point a stick at someone, say 'bang', and blow a hole through their chest, you need a gun for that'.

I have little issue with my character being swayed through plausible means.

I have major issues with my character being swayed through complete absurdities, same as I'd have major issues with the "Bang!"-twig blowing a hole through my chest instead of an actual boomstick.