Best posts made by ThatGuyThere

@Apollonius
Laughs that first sentence came pretty close to the last table top group I ran for. Though with a completely different plot but still made me smile.

Honestly I would think it would look a lot like fourth edition. Fifth edition walked back a lot of things to be more traditionally cyberpunk. Fourth was pretty far from cyberpunk but then again cyberpunk is not really a modern thing, it was a reaction to the emergence of multinationals and technology being everywhere. Neither of those things really generates a reaction anymore because they have been fait accompli for awhile now.

So he acts like a feudal king?

@Thenomain
Fourth edition had wireless everywhere and you really did not need to ever go wired, you could if you wanted but most things were assumed to be wireless, and tech in general seemed to me more advanced from a modern point then the cyberpunk view of what the future would be.
Fourth edition also dealt a fair amount with governmental politics at least some of the adventure paths, (seasons I think they call them but basically a same thing as the Pathfinder adventure path a collection of modules that form a whole) Now corporations played a huge role in said politics but things like the Orc Underground seeking official district status where drive my non-coprorate entities even if impacted and influenced by them. Same with the Fall of Brackhaven (Governor of Seattle) while corps played a role if was presented much more as a governmental political inspired plot rather then a corp power play.
Where if you look at earlier editions or other Cyperpunk games, most notably Cyberpunk 2020, non-corporate power structures get a mention but rarely much of a focus or meta-plot spotlight.

I think the main benefit of a grid is having places that will make events matter. For example lets there the is an event at a grided Hangout and it gets the customary media post. I read that and can then use that information as something my character would talk about, hey something happened at the bar we go to in convos even if he was not there.Also if there is followup stuff my character would likely look into it at least after all it is his regular bar.
Now lets that that happens in an anywhere room,same post goes up but name of the Bar is some place I have never heard of, not likely to mention it or even remember reading it more the five minutes later, definitely not going to look into the matter.
To me the grid is one of the big things that keeps games connected instead of being many little sandboxes.

@Thenomain
For me it is about scale of PC power. If you look at the main characters of a Gibson novel they are still very mortal, there is the feeling that while they can accomplish great things they are still ordinary people. CP2020 felt this way to me as well. Shadowrun even at straight from c-gen level has the feel of being more then ordinary, maybe not the baddest ass around but a cut above the majority of the faceless population.
and to second @Lithium I loved the depth of the history when Earthdawn was still part of the some continuity.

What I mean by authority in this instance if I was chosen to be a sphere wizard I would require the authority to decide who was in the sphere and freedom to run it how I saw fit.

there is one big difference between Fading Suns, Shadow Run and most games we mush and WoD.
You buy Fading Suns you get the rules to play all the various character types sure some options are added in supplements but you can play a noble, merchant clergy or alien with just the base book just fine.
Shadowrun is the same way you buy the base book and all the rules for mages, riggers etc are there. Again lots of options added in the supplements but the base book only can work.
For WoD you buy the base book it lets you play humans, to play vamps you have to buy vamp. to play Werewolves you have to buy werewolf etc. So it is not really the same. If you are staffing a Shadowrun game the base book at least gets you prepared to answer mage question and only odd things require more than that. If you are staffing a WoD game you need many books to be able to do it all and that from a financial stand point alone points to having spheres to ease the burden on perspective staffers.

Yeah I am as anti-NWoD 2.0 as anyone. But mechanically it is superior to the previous editions.
I don't like the added fiddly bits for online play, and pretty much hate everything storywise about it to the point I would never play it, but it is mechanically superior and beat is just the term they use for xp. It is not like other games have not changes that term around to something that fit the vibe they were aiming for better better.
Edit to add: Before you claim calling xp something different is a new thing the TSR Marvel Superheroes game called it Karma and the Mayfair Games DC Heroes game called it Hero points both of which were created in the mid 80s.

Not to mention history classes in high school in general are worthless.
They barely mentioned the Federalists, a party that while brief did a large part of shaping the form of the government let alone anything that is out of the US.
College levels get better if you can get the right professor but that is a chance-y thing until you hit the 300 level of things.

I have had staff pop into rooms where I have been rping to observe rp and when visible I think it is cool and a good way to keep tabs on things. Doing it unannounced and invisible is hinky to me.

For me length of pose and length of wait are two completely separate issues.
Pose length is really a matter of scene flow more then anything else, what drive me crazy is wait time.
I understand rl coming up unexpectedly and am fine with slow with warning, but a regular wait of more then five minutes or so without word and i know my brain starts disengaging from the scene. I will stay and keep rping but at that point i know i am not giving my best, and am likely to have started focusing more on other things in other windows.
Note I am not especially harsh on this for example one of the people I rp with a lot is an exceptionally slow poser but they also chat a lot OOC so that keeps me paying attention what drives me crazy is the ten minutes of no screen movement at all.

@Ghost
To be fair there are quite a lot of people that play tabletops that way too.
I know I have have to really stress to new players that if the dice says you die I will not GM fiat to save you in my tt campaigns. I do this before i start each one and I still get players who have not gamed with me before surprised when it happens. And have lost players as a result for that matter. Note not every game I run is deadly it all depends on the genre.
Honestly I am fine with either style but I do think games need to be a lot more specific about what they are on the tin so to speak.
For example I had the same issues with Star Crusade as Cirno did some times. I played a Questing Knight out to do stuff and found mostly social scenes.

Wow the fate system from DM lives again.
Not to mention this closely mirrors the risk system from City of Hope only with with out xp being involved there.
For my experience on DM this if how thing will go, everyone who cares about character building will be Level 3 for the xp bennies, though keep a friend who make s a level 1 char around them to keep the actual risk down. Regardless of what level they are set it will not lessen the ooc drama when things happen they don't want.

If you market yourself as a yes first game then the first no will cause people to bitch regardless of how reasonable that no might be.
Do I think this is right? No not at all. but it is will happen.
If you want to have a game that yes first and not lead to a lot of drama I think you almost have to go the small game or invite only route.

@faraday said:

• Having "yes first" as a staff mantra to encourage staff to be open-minded and allow players to steer the game is not so bad. Advertising a game a "yes first" opens yourself up to all kinds of bizarro player expectations and entitlement issues, as others have already said.

This exactly. Yes as Ark stated people will find things to complain about if they want to but it still makes zero sense to give them extra ammunition and while some people will complain the trick is to minimize that number if you have 5 percent of your player base unhappy that is a workable condition for the most part up that number to 25 and the game is in trouble. In both places people are bitching but the degree is the important thing.

Yes because in hippy land everything is wonderful.
the more you post on this topic the more I wonder if you actually deal with humanity. Once there is a pint of conflict people will take sides if staff does not at least put out the information it wants out there folks will side with the only voice talking.
Yes staff should be concerned with winning, not the game really but the continued trust of the player base.

We have irreconcilable views on humanity so leaving that aside. How would you deal with this hypothetical.
You refuse Player A's request for something that needed to be refused. You have the stated yes first policy. So Player A then starts a campaign of Staff is unfair. Said player points out how staff said yes to Thing B C D who were all near the line you have but not quite over it. Up until this point Player A has not shown to be a problem.
Note this is less hypothetical and more a generic look at something that I have seen many times.
You are not the first to champion yes first in fact there have been many in the past DM was and I played there in 1994 and it didn't even have BGs required or more of a bar then to get IC then code checking the math. The Reach certainly started out that way, and I made a PC there the first day it was officially open.
I make these posts not to discourage a yes first mentality but to show where the pitfalls are and hopefully let you plan a way to deal with them. Assuming they will not happen is not the answer.

Actually I think Don't be a Dick is a horrible game policy. No two people have the same idea of what being a dick constitutes. Therefore if you have more then one staffer it will by unevenly applied.
For reference see the Reach with it's policy of Be Excellent to Each Other. In theory this a a great way to be. However with out a guideline on what that means in practice with in the first six months on the game it had faded into being a meaningless buzz phrase. And on channels was used in multiple cases to end discussions by uninvolved third parties.
I think Don't be a Dick and Be Excellent To Each Other are great philosphies and hte starting point for policies but not really policies themselves.

Honestly this sounds like a game I would at least look at. Not a huge Star trek person though. I mean I have watched and liked most of the various series but not to the point of being a "Trekkie", so not sure how much I count as the target market for something like this.