Posts made by Tempest

I haven't played on Arx since the Alpha, but out of curiosity, who is Custodius playing?

There was some suspicion he was....fuck what was the name...Hadrian...Leo?? Fuck, I can't remember. Some Velenosa duke guy, back then.

"We do not and will not support PCs designed with no personal agency. This means: no prostitute characters, no Thralls of House Thrax, etc."

Something must have changed since Alpha if no Thralls is a thing? I seem to recall some noblewoman who was a Thrall.

Haha, sorry! Hopefully things pick up.

Personally, mixing Marvel/DC just waters down both to me. Feels wrong-fun to me, and I've honestly never seen a particularly well-done scene with say Batman/Spider-Man (fucking wrote superman here, whoops) together.

Doing both in 'one universe' just seems super fanservice-y/"we need players".

I prefer single universe games, but I also recognize I'm in the minority, because the two single-uni games, DC Rebirth and Marvel Reborn are dead as fuck.

Idly, wtf are the "Brides of Dracula"? I've never heard of this as a covenant.

@Roz My life is a lie.

@Roz What isn't? o_o

@Arkandel said in Roleplaying writing styles:

On the contrary I've learned to associate brevity with subpar roleplay. It's largely a bias, I'll freely admit it, and there are definitely players who can pull it off. @Coin, for all he's a blight on this world, can make every word count but most people can't get away with it. There's also a stigma about it being a sign of distraction such as when someone's playing on multiple scenes and just churns out a quick pose once in a while.

I can't help but feel 'brevity' is bad. This is just personal taste, of course, and I'm sure it works for some people.

On the other hand, I agree with @Arkandel entirely in that by /no means/ does verbosity mean someone is good. Anybody can vomit out 5 paragraphs if they try hard enough (Protip : Tempest's #1 obvious sign of a verbose, shitty roleplayer, they write paragraph after paragraph about how special and awesome their character is and manage to add nothing to the scene, somehow.)

I just have a hard time remaining interested for long if you can't /at least/ give me 2 paragraphs every pose. Because, tbh, you're probably not giving me a lot to work with. And honestly, that might be more a flaw with me. Or it's just different tastes.

When I hear 'brevity' I just picture those Elysium-sort of poses we're all familiar with. Or people who will just pose "She smiles." or some other 2/3/4 word action in every pose they write. Yes, we all abuse those small gesture, but like...give me some flavor please. "She laughs and flashes a cocky smile at Jane after the woman's comment." Not just "She smiles."

I am definitely an elitist in terms of RPing styles.

Random pet peeve. People who don't seem to understand that you can combine an action and dialogue into 1 sentence with a comma.

She smiles. "Hey Jane." She looks around. "Where is everyone?"

She smiles, "Hey Jane." She looks around, "Where is everyone?"

Something about that genuinely bugs me and will make me think less of you.

Over the past few years, I've grown to 'expect' things like the example @Arkandel mentioned earlier as part of good RP.

For example: "Bob sits down and grows silent. Ever since he returned from the war he's been reserved in social settings with people he doesn't know well. He lifts his glass and...".

Because the alternative is...what, exactly? "Bob sits down, grows silent, grabs a beer, and adds fuck all to the scene because edgy loner." Once upon a time, I was in the "omg thoughtposing is bad" crowd, but now..I mean, we're writing a story together, that sort of stuff adds flavor to the story. (Unless you're one of the bitches who does it passive aggressively in group scenes to take shots at people you don't like.)

I've also grown way more verbose in my poses over the years. Lots of fluff. I can cut it down to a paragraph or two in big group scenes, but if that's all I'm writing, I'm probably bored quickly.

"Tempest smiles and waves back at Jane. "Hey, how are you?" She keeps smiling. When Bob talks she looks at Bob and laughs. "That's so funny!" She sits in a chair nearby."

I can't tolerate poses like that any longer. I used to be able to 'make do' with that sort of stuff, but now it just makes me want to pull my hair out.

And it's usually the prevailing sort of RP you'll see in Elysiums/other gathering places, which has kind of led me to be more and more insular as time goes by, regarding who I play with, and not venturing into public much. I'm a jaded, bitter bitch

That's lewd, Gany.

Don't be lewd.

Think of the children.

But, no, really, think of the children.

The more I think about it, the more I can't help but decide that the reason people like to restrict FUs, is because they want to play a non-FU and don't want to constantly be in the shadow of Jedi Jim. Hell, Jedi Jim probably sucks. Shows up to every public scene and plot, writes 2 sentence poses, and doesn't know what punctuation is. But he's a JEDI! There's just a 'perception' or something attached to that simple fact that some people don't like.

Yes, yes, you need pilots and slicers and diplomats and all that stuff.

But more often than not, the most common "events" on a MU are random beat 'em ups where the people with cool combat powers get to shine. Combat plots with 0 ramifications afterwards are probably more common than any and ever other kind of plot /combined/.

In a movie, it's pretty easy to make Han seem awesome and obviously doing stuff.

On a MU, when there's 10 han solo knockoffs and 10 luke skywalker knockoffs....at least the Lukes are JEDI. "Oh wow, another dashing rogue of a pilot....yeah, i'll hit you up when I can't find one of the other 19 pilots" -- "Oh wow, another Jedi...PSHOW PING POW BOOM LIGHTSABORZZZZ"

...I dunno. Just my random thoughts as I consider this.

@Ganymede

It's MUing though.

Everybody wants to be the action hero.

Nobody cares about my hot stud Channing Tatum PBd Han Solo knockoff when Jim over there has a lightsaber.

@Ganymede I personally think it's just that, 1v1 at lower levels, the average FU will beat the average goon without breaking much of a sweat, solely on account of block/deflect and Skill Focus UTF. The FU can easily be rolling 1d20 and adding their 10-15ish UTF to defend vs attacks, while the other player just has their shitty reflex defense. On average, the FU can technically have a 'defense' averaging in the 20-30 range at fairly low levels, where the non-FU counterpart is lucky to have 15 Reflex Def. (My values on low level UTF/etc might be off here, again it's been a while.)

There's a 'perception' of FUs being stronger, just because even people who don't know the system at all will probably start with block/deflect/Skill Focus UTF. And without even knowing what they're doing, they can go jump into combat. Meanwhile, everyone else has to browse 500 feats/talents to find the few that will put them on that same level, and take the time to learn stuff like autofire rules, etc.

Take that same 1v1, with two players who know the system very well, tell one player to make a combat jedi and the other player to make a character to kill that jedi, and I'm pretty sure the non-FU mops the floor via Autofire/etc.

Even without autofire, there's nonsense like a wookiee in rage, with a couple of the Feats that make rage way stronger, and maybe some of the grappling feats, etc.

A couple of comments. 100% agree with the remarks above about Jedi being fairly weak in SAGA. Dark Side FUs can be a little absurd mechanically (as I said before, Dark Rage & Force Choke, and those are easily HRd). AoE/Autofire can eff Jedi up too. Also a very big, stacking penalty to every use of deflect/block in a turn.

Now, to touch on a related subject, even if FUs were OP OP OP, would it even really matter? Is there really expected to be Player Killing PVP? That seems to be such a rare thing these days in MU land. And in any plots/whatever, the "protagonists" (be they the good or bad guys) are almost always outnumbered anyways.

I just do not fundamentally understand the point of a Star Wars game where Force Users are restricted to the point where a new player can't show up and app one if they want to.

I've played my share of plain old pilot/bounty hunters, but if that's /all there is/ outsides of plots....Why aren't you using Firefly or something for a setting.

Anyways, not like anything I'm saying is new. These are decade old complaints. Not trying to 'bash' staff or the game, either. Just talking.

On a more constructive note...The 'let people be force sensitive and then learn force stuff after CG' thing is nice in theory, but is not going to work very well on SAGA. You need to be specializing your character and planning out your next five level ups ahead of time if you want to be relevant. Making a character, and then trying to band-aid "force stuff" onto them months after the fact isn't going to work.

And really, how can you want to restrict FUs in the first place, and then actually consider a 'resolution' where-in every FU will be a one-in-a-million Luke Skywalker wannabe who goes from knowing nothing to being MISTER FORCE MAN in the span of 6 months/whatever?

Does this game have the super detailed code system that every other SAGA seems to have?

IE all the info files on feats and what not, and the +map system?

The staff on Fallen World was initially going to let people pay for things like alts, Seer characters, Left-Handed, blah blah (i'm no mage expert), with 'story points'. IE points from running and participating in plots.

They mostly gave up on it, afaik, though there's still some aspect of it with certain merits or something.

There was a oWoD game I recall poking at 6+ months ago (no idea if it's still around), where you had 'X amount of points' in CG, and doing snowflake ass shit cost you points. While if you did a super common (thematically) clan vampire in the faction they're supposed to be and started 12th gen or whatever, you could go through CG without spending any of those points, and then they converted to XP.

(I don't actually play oWoD, apparently this is actually an oWoD thing, the rarity system. Nice to know. Was my first experience with such a thing.)

I really liked that idea, even if only because it let me roll my eyes every time some super snowflake antitribu who bought as much generation as possible came on channel complaining about how weak they were.

You guys seem worried about the focus on mechanics/combat in d20, so I'm curious about something.

Did you nerf Wookiees?

The most disgustingly OP things I've ever seen in SAGA are wookiee builds. The only FUs that come close are dark siders, because of dark rage, and as I recall, if you go by 'rules as written' force choke is obscenely strong since it takes the other person's turn and can be maintained once you start it.

They have Worshyrr rage or w/e (it's been years) and then a multitude of feats that make it better and better and better.

I was soooo interested...until force users are restricted.

I mean, dear god, just going with 'staff picks who gets to be FU or not' would be better than that. Anybody who drags over friends instantly has a leg-up on everyone else in the FU race.

People talk about MUs becoming popularity contests all the time, but you guys are going to brave new worlds in regards to that.

And then on top of that it looks like you are /completely/ neutering the FUs you do allow, mechanically speaking.

No Jedi class. No Force Training Feat. No Skill Focus UTF.

So, any FUs you do allow are...going to have VERY FEW force powers(IIRC, without Force Training, you just get Wis Modifier=Force Powers), and suck really bad at everything else too (deflect/etc) since that all runs off UtF and Skill Focus is a +5 bonus to that.

...Why not just say no FUs at all?

This Guest Stars thing........wtf?

http://www.fandlmux.com/Character_Types

Yes, the rules make "sense", but still. Seems very...strange.

@Arkandel I'm not staff or anything, but yes. My understanding is Order 66 happened in the game's setting, but wasn't /as/ successful, so there's more Jedi left around but the Order is scattered, and there's more Sith lurking around/etc. (source - did an app)

I'm pretty sure the FCs are being played as regular PCs. I don't mind personally...until the Rebellion side of things becomes "Luke Skywalker and Friends", which experience says....it probably will.

I have no idea who Luke is, but if we're going to be honest, There's pretty good odds the player will A) wind up squatting, barely being active, and TSing Mara Jade, or B) be an attention whore who makes the whole game all about him.

Again, not saying there's a problem, and I have no idea who these players are, and I don't care they're playing FCs, but....most of us have done this song and dance a few times. How often does the above Options A & B /not/ happen?

tl;dr Who cares there's FCs, it's fine. Until it's not, and then the question is whether staff actually does something.