Posts made by surreality

@apos I don't disagree with what you are saying as it regards writing fiction, or even creating a game world in any other genre. (Or even in a more fantasy-based sci-fi genre to some extent, like Dune, or the Martian Chronicles.)

I vehemently disagree with what you are saying as it pertains to a MUX on which players are going to be making characters that have expertise in some area or another that you have to define as existing in the first place, what it entails, and why it's the difference between life and death when you're living on a space ship.

Regarding the edit, that's the problem: that is not something that can be done as easily in sci-fi.

There is a non-trivial reason that 'world building guides' even for non-interactive fiction in which there is only one (or a small duo or trio) of authors at work cover more or less everything -- and then have a whole additional book specifically for sci-fi settings. The audience expectations are that intrinsically different.

ETA: Pacing to reveal things to a reader or viewer is way, way different than necessary exposition for players to be able to create the characters they want to play in sci-fi. As a passive consumer of fiction, you may not know the ship runs on a warp drive that uses byzantium217 hydrocores on day one, but the person playing the ship's engineer? Needs to know this.

@apos While I agree with you in theory, sci-fi really is its own animal in this regard, and is substantially different from creating a fantasy-based setting. @faraday is not wrong on the lottery comparison, and every world-building guide for creating a world for fiction (interactive or otherwise) under the sun (or from the moon?) will tell you this explicitly, too. The expectations and requirements are substantially different, as is the required knowledge base.

I have played on many excellent original theme (and/or system) games, sometimes for years, quite happily.

None of them were sci-fi games.

Not because I wouldn't have been interested, but because they weren't there. By the time I'd hear they existed, they'd typically be down to two people logging in ever, and on their way to their demise.

I like original sci-fi. I had an idea for one I love, but I just cannot do in depth tech questions. They give me a blazing migraine faster than a white background web page filled with flashing bright cyan and yellow text. I could probably provide as much info as you'd get from your average TV show or movie about how things work without stressing it, but that doesn't tend to be enough for players drawn to the tech aspects of the game, so I've more or less tabled it forever and ever and ever, amen.

@killer-klown You'd have to ask for clarification on the OP forums for all of that, how many more they can take or if it's only one more, or if the merit Tell would be treated as any other Tell rather than 'a spiritual link to father wolf' etc. I can't say I care enough at this point to look.

The reason it didn't work on Reno was because nobody else got to keep their shit, and we didn't consider that balanced or fair, hence 'we will not be doing that'. I know this because, again, I'm the one who created that HR. Please don't presume to know my logic better than I do, it's not so kosher.

I don't see this as the 2E 'new bloodline'. I think 'WB keep the Tell' is how they just out and out replaced Dead Wolves entirely as a bloodline conceptually and don't plan on making any special bloodline at all for them going forward in the canon material.

@killer-klown Reno HR converted it by saying 'no, that's not going to be a thing'. I recall this because I did that original conversion.

Page 300, WtF2E:

Sometimes within the course of a chronicle, a Wolf-Blood- ed character may change her core nature. She may experience the First Change, be ghouled or Embraced by a vampire, be drawn into the Hedge, or even Awaken as a Mage, should the story benefit from those changes. In any of these cases, the Storyteller may require the character lose any Wolf-Blooded Merit she has to reflect her disconnect from Father Wolf and Luna. In this case, consult the Sanctity of Merits rules on p. 105. Unless she goes through the First Change, a Wolf-Blood- ed character retains her Tell if she becomes another kind of supernatural creature.

@killer-klown ...did they change the thing about WB keeping tells if they got embraced or whatnot? I seem to recall that, despite my otherwise all-around brain-purge of all things WtF2E. That seemed to be how 2E on the whole was going to address the Dead Wolf concept in general.

Speaking of Netflix and critics and controversial things: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/damien-hirst-created-fake-documentary-venice-show-can-see-netflix-1192922

This is actually really pretty damned neat, even knowing it's all a weird fusion of art+performance art.

According to the 90-minute mockumentary, the vast Venice spectacle was not the 52-year-old artist’s highly anticipated comeback exhibition, which took 10 years and cost a reported $65 million to produce.

Instead, the film suggests the show was the debut presentation of long-lost treasure discovered by a team of archaeologists and divers off the coast of east Africa. The trove—so the story goes—had been assembled during the 1st or 2nd centuries by a former slave turned voracious collector, Cif Amotan II (an anagram, it turns out, for “I am fiction”).

As most of us are story people, this might be more fun a watch than you'd initially expect. I am a geek for absolutely all of the things it's about -- art, art history, mythology, elaborate hoaxes, treasure hunting, marine biology -- so this one had my name all over it, but its very existence makes me smile.

My main takeaway from it was: 'this may be on the fun side of OK for a movie, but a whole shedload of people would probably play the shit out of this as an RP setting.'

@arkandel It wasn't brilliant -- or even... particular bright <ducks> -- but it was a fairly interesting take on something close to a Shadowrun-ish setting, just with lower tech levels than predicted by ye olde setting docs. It could have been so much worse. (For instance, all of Will Smith's kids could have been in it, too... I guess they're saving that for the sequel.)

So far as I know, Reno is just continuing on from where it was with a wiki and code update -- same everything world-wise, same characters on grid at the same levels, etc. I initially thought it was a reboot, too, but just a move of 2.0 apparently, so all the old content (more or less) is still there (or will be, if they have the info to enter since the original wiki is now gone).

(I was only able to set up tools for them to mad scramble things over in the time I had, not really transfer anything but a test instance or two of each myself in most cases, which I gather they'll remove if they don't want it, so I couldn't say what's staying or going or why it's there. I'm still building tools... eeee.)

@zombiegenesis My suggestion here -- take it with a huge grain of salt -- is to either not use them (which sounds like it hasn't worked out well for games that went that route), or write them all up custom, following a uniform formula for what they do/don't get as part of the bloodline.

The mystery cult guidelines -- which I'm not suggesting you swap in here -- are a good example of what I mean. I wouldn't tie it to status or rank or anything, but something like that, with something like this as a template:

• 1 main flaw
• 1 main perk
• 1 devotion around 1xp
• 1 devotion around 2xp
• 1 devotion around 4xp
• 1 small custom merit they can buy
• 1 moderate custom merit they can buy

(Or whatever.)

@thenomain If you want squint-worthy: any time I try to google some location in my state, Delaware, I have to tell google that no, I don't mean Delaware, Ohio, goddammit.

Now that is sad right there.

@fortydeuce ^ This.

I wonder how many of us would have picked 'not the sword' if it was 'known for a specific skill' or something. Probably... all of us?

@cupcake ...but but but but but you can flop over into the puddle on the dirt road to put yourself out when you're on fire! See, there's your free education!

(If I hadn't seen plenty of actual political discussions/arguments precisely as dim as the joke response above, I would probably hate political discussions less than I do. )

@ganymede A lot of this comes from the 'all or nothing' approach that's becoming more common -- or at least one hell of a lot more visibly common.

Nuance is a thing. Compromise is a thing. Cooperation is a thing.

The 'all or nothing' approach is -- luxuriant is a good word, but I see it more as 'damagingly self-indulgent'. It's ultimately about ego, in the form of being able to claim a universally superior ideology.

This is not reality. Reality is a lot closer to this: "We have some good ideas, and we have some real stinkers." This is true no matter what the hell the ideology in question actually is.

It's not about practical real world results, which almost always require nuance, compromise, and cooperation...

...all of which require the ability to consider that (generic) you might be wrong, and (generic) they might be right about <specific thing>, even if (generic) you are right about <other specific thing> and (generic) they are pitching some eye-watering stinkers on that other subject.

Tribalism is making idiots of us all more often than not.

I am again pretty much in the 'nope, you couldn't pry me out with co-workers' thing, which I learned during the days before all the work-from-home self-employment stuff.

But that brings me to another thing.

I will flip out if I do not feel like I'm being productive enough.

I'm extremely detail-oriented and fussy•, so the kinds of things I do are very rarely 'slap 'em together and call it a day' sorts of things, no matter what the actual facet of the job is that time. (Graphics, jewelry, etc. Dye-related stuff is the wild card; it's like the one 'throw shit in a pot and run with it'/'creative mess-making' exception, and it's necessary for sanity once in a while.)

This makes 'yeah, my schedule is flexible'... true and not. It is true in that 'I can plan to get my work done by a certain time so I can do something at <X> hour'.

It is not true in that I set completely unrealistic standards for what I should be able to get done in a specified period of time -- even accounting for the fussiness -- and the worst bit is...

...about half the time, I actually meet them. This is how I end up with three file boxes of fussy-detailed little earrings in a week and a half while doped to the gills on painkillers immediately after surgery, five lawn and garden-size trash bags of dyed yarn when given a 'hey, we have a show next weekend, want to sell with us?' after I've just sold them every scrap of my existing stock and have only a handful of days to produce more on my own, and similar things more or less on the regular.

This is just really not how sane people operate... at all. The common thread to the art jobs is apparently 'not smart enough to realize I cannot consistently pull miracles out of my ass without killing myself with stress'. But it does work for me in most ways, because the 'not doing it' hits the YOU ARE NOT BEING PRODUCTIVE ENOUGH button, and that thing fires off a nuclear self-destruct sequence, I'm sure of it.

It's that... other half of the time. The other half of the time when it takes a completely sensible amount of time to complete a task rather than my crash-course 'don't rush through or skip steps or even the fussy levels of finishing, but don't you slack for a hot second!' approach's amount of time.

Then my schedule's just fucked, and I am suddenly the world's worst flake on scheduling and anything social, because... work has to come first, even if my work is super Peter Pan/Never Growin' Up! as far as work goes in many respects. I mean, sole proprietorship... there's no underlings or overlings I can blame if shit doesn't get done here.

Working from home? Also means you are always at work, not just that you're always at home. There's no hour o'clock that you can call it quits and turn off the work brain as easily because you're 'going home now'.

Thankfully, a few of my friends get this. Most people who have never been in this kind of position cannot wrap their brains around it to save their lives, and I can't blame them -- it is really weird even if it's understandable if you think about it some.

• I'm the same way with stuff in personal time as well. If y'all had any idea how many times I have tweaked and re-tweaked the same core concept wiki on and off over the past three years on the most minute 'nobody but me would likely even notice that' level, you would laugh, and should laugh.

@wretched This, though I stopped picking them up a while ago. I will have to snoop around a little for, uh, the two years from now budget. (Computer this year, displays and camera body next year, and I feel like the underpants gnomes where there's a big ol' "... " "Profit!" on the list.)

@wretched I am one of those assholes that does a ton of graphics and has pined for a cintiq I will never acquire for...ever, since I now have not drawn anything in way longer than I care to admit. (I suck at graphics tablet; I actually never did classic video games, so while my hand-eye coordination rocks on paper, my distance-based hand-eye coordination that a standard graphics tablet relies on? SUCKS.) I've used the logitech thumb-side trackballs since they came out, and love the hell out of them since they're fairly precise and I'm 20+/- years of used to them. We'll be picking up the new one of those when it's time (or when this one dies, if it dies before that).

@thenomain Oh yes, the plan is sitting with it in the cart, staring at me. I have $100 from Xmas I was told I was NOT TO SPEND ON ANYTHING REMOTELY PRACTICAL, so I'm allowing for that. <shifty-eyes>

I keep thinking: hmm, it's not like I couldn't just, say, set it aside as a 'RP only' or 'dev writing only' keyboard, and keep murderfacing the magics on the regular. And while the mouse we're replacing the current one with will work across 2 computers (all the for that, btw), the keyboards wonnnnnnnnn't without extra foo/special software/etc., and... and... and...

@wretched I KNOW. There's a black one, too. And a woodgrain and gunmetal one. I just... those motherfuckers so help me gods I don't have money for that!

If I believed it'd survive longer than my usual keyboards (3 months to a year)... I dunno, though, I mean, it looks more durable than the basic mac magic keyboards? (Which are the ones I keep murdering to death on the regular.)

You just sit in the cart and wait until somebody buys one of the expensive necklaces, keyboard!