Posts made by surreality

@Miss-Demeanor said in Where's your RP at?:

@surreality said in Where's your RP at?:

@Miss-Demeanor said in Where's your RP at?:

@mietze I think you might need to double-check here, hun. Nobody, until you, was talking pvp. Character death in plot or prp is generally at the hands of NPC's. Consent isn't just about player versus player. It goes for accepting inherent danger in dangerous situations... as ST'd with NPC's.

I have been talking almost exclusively about PvP scenarios, and they absolutely happen.

I'm not saying they don't. But I was absolutely not talking about pvp (specifically, anyways), I was talking about character death as a whole. I refuse to base an entire discussion about character death solely on ONE aspect of it.

Except you seem to be willing to go along with the trend of insisting that people who might favor a system that allows for death, but also favor that if somebody wants to show how badass they are, or if a GM wants to have an example of how dangerous an antagonist is, they target an NPC instead of a PC to show the PCs how shit just got real rather than plowing through three PCs at random, they're more folks who just can't handle anything bad happening to their characters. Which is utter bullshit. Seriously, you invoked a meteor or piece of frozen airplane turds falling out of the sky for no reason to smash a character flat as something people should be cheerfully embracing. No, not everybody feels that way, and no, that does not make them immature little self-centered jerks who don't know how games work. I do not actually recall, for example, a 'chance of random rocks-fall-everybody-dies' chart anywhere in WoD, so it is pretty safe to assume this would have to fall under the banner of 'sometimes bad shit happens', but completely ignores the fact that 'bad shit' comprises a lot more than random death by shitcicle, and if someone decided this was the kind of bad shit they were going to pull out of nowhere to knock someone's character off the grid, that person should maybe not have the authority to do much on that game any more. (Though there could be one, because jesus do they ever have everything else.)

@Ghost, you're sliding down the slope here on the unplayable thing, too, using the worst examples as an excuse to discount all of them. Knock it the fuck off, please. You're smarter than that shit.

The answer to these people pulling drama is simple as hell: "OK, sorry the game isn't for you then, you should go." In that case, if they leave, that is their choice, not someone else's, and yes, that's pretty relevant. "I left because I couldn't have my shiny!" is not reasoning many people are going to empathize with. "I left because I didn't want to play a character that was <in a situation I find personally uncomfortable and was not enjoying>," is a mature choice, and takes responsibility for making that choice. If folks feel that strongly about the thing, this is their option, and they should use it. If they're whining about it as a bluff, call that fucking bluff and tell them to get on with the getting on.

@Miss-Demeanor said in Where's your RP at?:

@mietze I think you might need to double-check here, hun. Nobody, until you, was talking pvp. Character death in plot or prp is generally at the hands of NPC's. Consent isn't just about player versus player. It goes for accepting inherent danger in dangerous situations... as ST'd with NPC's.

I have been talking almost exclusively about PvP scenarios, and they absolutely happen.

It's not... really a merit. Aspects are more equivalent to a discipline or a gift.

And like @Tempest mentions, being able to heal agg -- even at a much slower rate -- is default built in to the vamp template, not a power that needs to be bought separately (even if it's only 10-15xp).

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

@surreality All my love, too.

I'm just going by this: game: a form of play or sport, especially a competitive one played according to rules and decided by skill, strength, or luck.

I think you're misunderstanding the holistic point I'm trying to make, so let me recalibrate.

• If we are opening playspaces to support players in writing novels, stories, etc about characters of their own design, where they get to decide what does and doesn't affect their characters (to maintain their enjoyment of the space), then we should come out and say so.
• If a playspace is using WoD or another game system as a system, and the game system is holistically important to task/risk resolution, then it needs to be stated up front that the entirety of PC story direction will not be decided by the player, but at times, by the dice.

See, here, we have no argument.

The previous points came across as 'all things are to be decided exclusively by the dice', and we all know that just isn't reality.

Games can also be structured as @faraday describes: under normal circumstances, use the dice; if no resolution can be agreed upon, use the dice; if there's no 'reward' you're trying to get out of it but some wholly in-theme and reasonable story development, don't stress it unless you want to.

And most of the time the latter is how it goes. Whenever my character makes a smartass remark, for instance, I generally leave that up to the writing to see if people around her think it's funny or not. If it was somehow important? Sure, I'd roll to see how charming it comes out to someone she's trying to influence, why not? Lies? Sure, I'll roll it, why not?

Bear in mind, I have zero qualms with risk floors being an option along with risk ceilings, and yes, I think it's reasonable for people to agree on such things when starting a scene. Stating: everyone participating in X event will end up infected with Y, this will be part of a long term story arc and there is no way participants will not be afflicted is as reasonable to me as this is a non-lethal sparring/training session; while your character is likely get get banged up some, regardless of any extreme rolls, severe injury will be the maximum damage cap that can be done to the character, they won't die.

Neither of these is 'just killing off a character to prove shit just got real' or 'players being unwilling to ever let anything bad happen to their character'. That's the point. And these scenarios are much more likely to occur in a game than the guy getting his head blown off for sitting on the favorite barstool, or someone screaming up a blue streak because they refuse to not be the prettiest princess in the room.

Reality lies in the middle, here. The reality is what people need to prepare for when running/planning a game.

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

I'm. Just. Saying. There's. Dice. For. That.

Actually... not exactly, which is the point I keep trying to raise here: there are systems for that.

Systems include dice, but they are not limited to dice.

Plenty of games have respawns, non-lethal settings as a combat option, and so on, alongside permanent death. To insist that a game is not a game if it includes these options is utterly ridiculous on its face, because they're as viable as game systems and mechanics as dice are. The game plenty of us play the shit out of, WoD, straight up has shit in it about 'don't even let somebody roll for shit that fucking stupid because it's impossible'.

I love you to death, man, but jesus.

@faraday @Trevler Those are cool options. They're also game/system mechanics -- just like implementing, say, a risk cap or floor on a scene can be a mechanic in a game.

All of the above is also much more viable as a means of managing multiple play styles on a single game than arguing only the furthest extremes.

Nuance is a thing, and tends to reflect reality best. Everybody in this thread is way too intelligent to pretend nuance is not a thing, so oh, on all ye gods and little fishes, I wish people would stop doing it.

@WTFE And it's funny that there's a mention of a rotary phone...

...since we had one of these in the house that my now 74-year old father was using when I was a wee little tyke.

Seriously I have to wonder if that actually is the same old phone, it's even the same color! We went through a whole variety of acoustic couplers over the years.

So, yes, Virginia, some of those Boomers were using their rotary phones with their computers, too. Shocking, I know.

@Ghost said in Where's your RP at?:

@surreality Well, yeah, a good GM doesn't go:
"You went to go break up the mugging outside of the bar and he was hiding a sawed-off shotgun in his pocket ROLL INITIATIVE, FUCK YOU YOU DIE."

But we're not talking about tabletop here, we're talking about players interacting amongst themselves. Sure, they can be something a ST or GM flings at someone. I've encountered these in players running into things other players are doing more often than any of them being GM'd, however, by a pretty big margin.

You're right, there are equally valid styles of play.

It's just that when you have one population of people who believe that the game is about risk, character sheets, and dice rolls, and another population of people who believe that the game is about what they decide the outcomes to be, then stuff gets awkward.

One crowd won't agree with the "never rolls dice" crowd deserves the rewards.

The other crowd doesn't want their characters or story risked to dice rolls, and doesn't want to be forced to do so to move the story along.

The problem here is that you're still addressing only the extremes.

OK, fine; that solves like 5% of the times this crap comes up, well done, how about the other 95%?

How about the time players want to run a sparring session that they agree in advance is going to be non-lethal and for minor damage only, and roll that exploding dice moment that would otherwise put someone in the ground? Are these people unable to play a game properly when they ignore the final roll and cap it to a hospital stay instead for a serious but unexpected wound, in accordance with the mutually desired outcome for that scene? Most RPG systems don't account for combat style sparring, or do so very poorly and in hopelessly unrealistic ways. It's not a big deal at the table, since this is rare as hell, but it's a fairly common M• scene to have that absolutely involves dice and actual consequences.

@Ghost Again, there's some extremes here. The extremes are, by definition, not the norm.

The dude in your scenario has a tiny chance of success. If he can't handle that, he shouldn't be pitching it -- and either way, somewhere along the line he'd have to be told, "Uhm, you realize... "

I wouldn't pitch a scenario like that and expect to come out of it alive IC; I'd call that one a 'blaze of glory exit' in my head, but damn it'd be neat if it could be pulled off.

Contrast with: my character's goal is to just go sit at a bar and chat up some random people. He gets his head blown off with a shotgun for taking the favorite bar stool of King Bad Day Jackass. There is no reason to expect death as a reasonable consequence of sitting down at a bar under normal circumstances.

Let's say, again, I'm going to a bar. A fight breaks out. If my character dives into the fray, yes, I should expect the character is likely to get hurt and I should be prepared for them to potentially die as a result. I also have the option of the character choosing to run for it if I don't want to deal with that risk in that scene.

Again, going to a bar. Everything goes swimmingly! ...and then on my character's way out, he sees a mugging going on in the alley. I shouldn't expect to have my character intervene and come out unscathed, and again, I should be prepared that they may die if they choose to interfere. I should be prepared, even if the character runs for it, to be pursued as a potential witness to the crime.

The difference between the latter two scenarios and the first are glaring.

Reasonability is a factor in all of these situations, and arguing the extremes and trying to set precedents based on those things alone completely ignore the real complexity of the issue and the ways in which it's going to actually crop up on a day to day basis on any given game.

The extremes are rare by definition.

Basing principles and practice on the extremes is a good way to do a lot of policy-creation and game planning that is not going to address the core issues, is ultimately going to be a waste of time since they're not the kind of scenario that typically arises that requires attention, and as the only realities that anyone has defined? Players in the normal middle ground dealing with any given situation are now tagged as being necessarily unreasonable in their glory-hounding story goals (solo hero), or as unwilling to accept that anything bad of any kind could ever happen to their character (objecting to bar stool headshot).

@Miss-Demeanor said in Where's your RP at?:

@surreality Eh. Consequence of using a dice-based system. I'm not going to complain if a roll fucks up my character. Its just part of the game. I've had characters that lasted months or years, I've had characters that didn't last past the first encounter. When you play the game, you make a tacit agreement to accept the consequences of the dice. Yes, it sucks... but you are now free to craft up a whole new character with a whole new story and find all new fun things to do. That is where I don't understand. Why get SO wrapped up in ONE character, that you can't stand to see them go?

Edit to add: @faraday I refer you to the above. You are putting no more time and effort into the character that got blown out of the airlock than the one that got to ride off into the sunset. Sometimes your favorite character dies. This is a fact. When your favorite character in a book series dies, do you stop reading the series? Or do you keep reading and find a new favorite character?

I think this is a mindset thing. For instance -- think about the backgrounds thing. You prefer to go in light and evolve things. It's not so much of an up front investment -- and I think that should be supported as a play style.

By the same token, others do things with a lot of work going in, which is also an approach that deserves respect -- or at least enough respect to not dismiss it was 'being so attached to one character they can't stand to see them go', which is rarely the case.

Essentially, it's just a different approach to the game, and probably a little bit of 'wanting something different from the play experience'. Dismissing the folks who do a lot of prep and get disappointed if their work is ended in a footnote as being overly attached and unable to let go is, to me, as inappropriate as it would be to suggest that you 'just don't feel like doing the work and writing an elaborate multi-step background thing'. That isn't the case at all -- in both of these instances -- and unless the game in question is designed to support one of these general approaches exclusively, it's a space that people of both mindsets are going to have to share. The first step to doing that effectively is by listening to what someone is saying and not instantly diminishing/dismissing it as being indicative of one of the red flags in the hobby like 'overly attached' and 'doesn't feel like putting in the effort' both are, and both are not often accurately attributed at all.

@Miss-Demeanor said in Where's your RP at?:

Why are people so afraid to have characters die? Why is death such a terrible thing in a game? Yeah, its the end of a story. Not the only story, just one of many. You can make a new story. Stories don't have to stop just because one person dies. The narrative continues under a new voice.

I don't think it's actually the dying that's an issue for most. It's dying pointlessly or without time and attention to the narrative, which can be pretty rare in most events (there are definitely exceptions). If you get ground to a pulp with a bad roll in a huge combat where your character's story ends in a half-line footnote of red mist after you've been playing them for a year is a pretty shitty ending to have, pretty much, but sometimes it's the best you're going to get out of a combat event death even with a really great ST, depending on what else is going on in scene.

Being random-smote to just prove shit just got real, that so-and-so really is a badass/means business, is really a fate best reserved for NPCs.

@WTFE said in RL Anger:

@surreality said in RL Anger:

@WTFE ...while ranting about double standards and hypocrisy. Let's not forget that part!

Please, let me forget that part. The drinking game is already killing me!

For real. I guess I need to say again, "Please have pity on the starving artist, because y'all are fucking bankrupting me with this shit."

@WTFE ...while ranting about double standards and hypocrisy. Let's not forget that part!

I guess being old and stupid about computers means I have more space in the brain to dedicate to things like "self-awareness", which is, in case this is a life lesson that some folks still need to learn, different from "self-importance".

Dude. This is where our generation fucked up by handing out all of those awards for just showing up. Whoever came up with that idea needs to be taken for a GoT-style walk of shame.

@Ghost I agree that it isn't a great choice for folks who want full control over their character's fate, but I don't think the other extreme -- random capricious PC kills to show that shit just got real guys! -- is viable, either, for an enjoyable play experience.

While there are some players who will whine and bitch up a blue streak about getting a hangnail or oh my god my character could never be intimidated!, they're fairly rare.

The sort of deaths people are averse to, for the most part, are the capricious ones. "He sat on my favorite barstool!" was, for a long-ass time, considered a perfectly reasonable cause to turn somebody's PC into a greasy red smear by someone having a crappy day RL and wanting to flex their muscles IC to feel important somewhere, and I'm pretty sure most folks these days agree that's complete bullshit.

The husband goes on about what his tabletop games have dubbed 'the PC aura'. And I think it's relevant here. NPCs are -- generally -- fine for that kind of show of force. You are not ending another player's story on an OOC hangry mood whim, then, and yeah, that's relevant. This goes to something bigger, though, and that's that the hobby has -- for the most part -- grown up and opened its eyes to the fact that it's shitty to smash up someone else's shit they invested time and effort into just because you can or just because you wanna smash some shit to get an RL bad day out of your system.

While there's a fair age spread in the hobby, I'd still think the majority of us who have been at this a while are between about 28-45 or so. It used to be mostly high school, college, and maybe a handful of just-recently-graduated college folks -- yes, we all got old.

I'm not throwing the 'growing up' term around for the sake of mere metaphorical language here. Not only do most folks have less time to invest (which means people want more quality out of that time, however they define 'quality'), we also collectively have a much better understanding of what investment of time and effort means as rent/mortgage-paying adults with jobs and responsibilities, so, yes, you're going to see a lot more resistance to the party kid/rebel 'just burn it all down ha ha ha fuck it smash all the things' mentality that's a lot more common in high school and college. When you know how much work shit really is to build up yourself -- in reality -- you get a lot less inclined to smash other people's shit up for sport. It's an empathy that translates to other aspects of life, games being no different (usually in subtle ways but sometimes much more consciously).

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

Further, I can't really imagine any society that prostitution in one form or another wouldn't happen.

There is actually a full thread on this elsewhere. Specifically.

In the end, the one thing I can't get past is this: there's no stigma about eating as a part of life in the world we know today. We still pay exceptionally good cooks to feed us once in a while because they do what they do so well, their skill as a cook is valued and appreciated and enjoyed, and thus they can make a living at it. There is zero shame and zero stigma: it's a part of life, it's normal.

If someone insisted that we shouldn't have professional chefs in the real world because for too long women were forced to cook and slave for their man or something similar, they'd get a confused-puppy-esque head tilt out of me before I abruptly decided they were not worth the time to argue with before just adding them to the mental catalogue of crazy people I needn't waste my time on.

THAT SAID, if a game wants to make a rule that says, "You know, we really just don't want characters of this type on our game," -- which they more or less did in all fairness here -- that's no harm, no foul. Leaping the logic around to poof it into nonexistence in a way that creates a new stigma that wouldn't rationally exist under those circumstances is just not even worth poking with the world's largest bargepole. Go with the 'we don't want to see the character type here' and really, just let it go. The mental gymnastics aren't worth the time, and they aren't going to change the reality on the ground anyway. (Generic) We play on games with dragons and vampires and psychic space aliens; just suspend that disbelief and move on.

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

This is so very, very true, a MUSH is a text only medium, people have no idea what your intended tone of voice is and thus how you mean to say whatever it is you just typed.

This is one of the reasons that if ever I have staff who have to translate surreality into people-speak? At least once, I need to have a chat with them on skype -- even if it's just once, because the number of misunderstandings this has prevented is stunning; same as if I end up talking to someone later and there's the forehead smack moment of, 'Oh! I totally get it, now!'. Problem being, I type in precisely the same weird-ass way I talk, but a lot of times I go off into crazy hyperbole that I know is meant in a silly tone to keep the mood light because I'm more or less a living cartoon of a person (it is so much worse with video, for real, no one would be able to take me seriously ever again), but... all the sigh in the world with that sometimes, because I forget how much tone is a thing.

@Ganymede "But, but, but MoOoOoOoOom! That would take effort and time away from gettin' mah freak on with Hotsy McEasypants!!!"

^ Only slightly paraphrased from a thing I heard shortly before a little piece of my soul died, circa 1998 or so.

And now I need a drink. Totally to toast that dead piece of soul, totally.

People make me sad.

@lordbelh said in Politics etc.:

@Ganymede @Lisse24

I'll add a willingness to embrace rather than shy away from healthy competition and factional conflict, and giving the tools to engage in them without necessitating ye telenukes.

This sums up the kind of PvP I think makes a game kick ass. In my own head, I dub this CvC rather than PvP, though -- since a lot of times, it's a cooperative player (PwP?) effort to get there rather than an oppositional one on the player level.

When I think of pure PvP -- players versus other players -- that line is a little blurrier, after a fashion? As though the term itself suggests an anti-cooperation mindset on the player level, rather than amongst the characters.

I am absolutely tangenting, but this is one of those things I wish we had better and more accurate terms for, sometimes.

@Cupcake Thank you.

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

I would be the first person to sympathize with being in a situation where you are limited to the subjectivity of your own intent, but if so many people are saying this is how you came off, and if staff was willing to ban you for it, you owe it to yourself as someone who is part of a community hobby to ask yourself why and how you gave that impression, try to view it objectively, and take what you can from that.

I know nothing about this situation; I don't play on Arx. I will say: this is beautifully put and is a sentiment that should be bronzed and put somewhere it can be read on every game ever.

As in, may I please quote this, with credit given, in the 'general words of wisdom' section of the wiki I'm tinkering up? (This is not remotely a joke; I'm actively looking for stuff like this lately and just haven't been up to asking for suggestions/advice to include yet -- this nails a big one, though!)