Best posts made by ThatGuyThere

I know Fallcoast as +comm which is like +job only designed for player use for plots. I know players can add other players to it and that +comms can be merged since for one recent thing two players in the group started +comms on the same issue nearly simultaneously.

It is one of those topics where a right answer is hard to define. absolutely believe staff should be free to enjoy and play on the games they put effort into. I also believe that staff should not be excluded from having spotlight or leadership completely.
I do think staff need to be extra careful not to go over their fair share of the spotlight. No one should have to play a character then never gets a chance to shine and that definitely includes staff, but any character staff included has to share that spotlight.
I will be honest I looked at Playing 5th World when it was open the first time. I didn't for one reason when I looked at the plot logged there were three or so characters who seemed to be the center of everything. I have no clue whether or not they were staff alts or not but I didn't want to be a bit part I MU* to be part of an ensemble.
To the outside it does not matter if the chars are staff alts or not but to the inside it does. While there are definitely cases of non-staff monopolizing a game, staff being perceived as doing the same tend to lead to greater hard feeling among the player base because right or wrong they are perceived has harder to oppose ICly.
I don't think as a community we have reached any sort of real consensus for how much is too much but like the wording of the famous pornography case we do know it when we see it.

@GirlCalledBlu said in Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers:

And I know I've used murdered family member and limb loss as examples, but I've been whacked on the nose for even just having a one-off adventure where my character was present rather than RPing yet-another-social-tavern-scene. I'm told that's spotlighting, and thus problematic.

Double post because this really to me is a separate issue. I see a large difference between a plot and a one off hey lets do something action-y rather then social.
There I think it is perfectly alright to have your character present and participating as long as you do not show favoritism to your PC over anyone else.
Honestly if I ever got groused to about something like that i would just stop running anything in that location if it was someone in authority doing the grousing.
I really do not see any problem with running a one off scene where your character participate but does not gain anything besides the standard benefit from being in such a scene.

@GirlCalledBlu said in Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers:

I think the biggest issue I have had when running stories for another character is feeling like I don't know the character very well, because you ALWAYS know your character better than anyone else because you share headspace. Maybe have a way for people to list out things they hope for their character beyond power leveling, or reputation gains? I dunno. Would you have that be more of a request thing? Going back to my arm loss scenario, I would put in a +request I want my character to lose a limb?

Or a +bbpost. Fallcoast and a couple other places I have played have a board dedicated for PrP requests. You put up what you want to have run for you, and I have seen some very detailed and some fairly vague and if that strikes someones fancy as a thing to run, then you contact the poster and something gets set up.
I am sure it could be done with +request as well but in this case I think the wider the audience the better since the goal would be to get more things run.

@Seraphim73 said in Leadership, Spotlight, and PCs of Staffers:

@Sunny Again, just so that everyone is on the same page, I'm not talking about metaplot scenes. I'm not even talking about PrPs with tangible benefits, I'm talking about gathering some friends together (who you have warned previously of the type of scene you're planning) to run a scene that furthers your character's storyline.

Yes you can absolutely do this but that removes any defense about what the game is truly about. Whether it is against stated rules or not if the main reason you are running a scene if to further your characters story, then despite all protests to the contrary then your highest concern is your character's story. It is no longer at attempt at collaboration it is a desire for an interactive audience.
If you are good at it yes you can find that audience but then don't be surprised in matter that are open to the public when people so signed on to play a game then complain that they were relegated to audience member.

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

@Kanye-Qwest said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

They are definitely meant to be mini-games that are opt in. Why do you feel like you'll be screwed if you don't participate?

I think there's a bit of necessity there, as tasks are a way to get resources, and resources are necessary to do some things - but those things are also meant to be opt in. The most rp/story 'necessary' use of resources I can think of is investigations, because it costs 25 social to start one (with a discount for each point of the investigate skill you have). But, you can get enough social resources to start an investigation by doing @task/work 7 times a week for ...well, 3 weeks if you don't have any of the investigation skill.

I'm honestly very curious what is making you feel you'll fall behind if you don't do tasks.

Out of curiosity, why DOES an Investigation cost social resources? I've never quite been able to understand that, conceptually. Originally, I rationalized as oh, I'm probably getting scribes or underlings to do a lot of the heavy lifting for me. But that doesn't really make any sense, because that's never factored in as far as I can see, with chance of success. Chance of success seems to come strictly from a PCs own stats and skills with no bonus or penalty due to the organization they belong to. Now, you can pay /extra/ resources to get a better chance, and that makes more sense in a way, I can see how that plays into it, but the initial cost seems to just be a random speedbump like the designers thought, "Hey, we need something for people to spend social resources on."

My guess and I am not affiliated with the game in any way is that it takes a far bit of time and effort to track down the people you need to learn stuff from and likely more pressure/influence/bribery/blackmail to get them to talk.
Unless it is something that can be researched completely in a library it takes a fair bit of effort. Heck even with modern tech a lot of investigations stuff requires things like stakeouts etc.
Now that could be RPed out but I can also see the logic of this work costs this many units of whatever.

I am definitely in favor skill groups. I know they can be used to min max but they also can be used for easy rounding out of ones character. If I want to be skill socially but not have it be my characters thin I can drop a couple points in influence and while I won't be a groups face I can not suck when called upon to make a roll. Without skill groups I have to look over the skill list and try to pick out everything I will need a point or to in for basic these are skill any character would have to survive in the environment level and I will guaranteed miss one or two which then lead to it being a pain in ass to make a character.
Given the normal issues with getting a starting critical mass of players on any new mush I would definitely not get rid of tools the published game already has in place to simplify the prospect.

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

2. The Exploration system, with dynamically generated rooms and automated plot/events in them.

I must say that sounds neat as heck. One of the things i wish was more possible in the MUSHing side of things is the ability to get a small group together and just find random things like that.

@Miss-Demeanor
I am not sure where the only one side gets to see the roll comes from. Both sides would see the roll both sides see all rolls in every code base I have any experience with.
What Arkandel suggested was the defense side suggesting modifiers. That works both ways and fits in most systems, if we are fighting in a bar and i suggest there should be a modifier on attacks of -2 due to there being a big crowd making maneuvering difficult, you have three choices, agree, negotiate or call in staff.
In a social situation say you are trying to fast talk me in a bar and I suggest a -2 due to your character being a known business rival you are left with the exact same three choices, agree negotiate or call in staff.
Yes people can and will be dicks with this but they can and will be dicks with any sort of system no matter how it is set up, even GURPS which is robust to a fault does not cover every situation that will come up in play. In any game where choices are open there has to be some level of agreement because no pre-written book will cover everything.

@Miss-Demeanor
Yeah I missed that part. I am fine with the entirety of Ark's proposed system except for that. But then I would be just as against that system for anything physical as well, so maintain the partial stance of it would be no different doing that for something psychical as well as social.
I think any sort of code mechanical thing should emit to both sides, though I still feel there should be no functional difference between how psychical confrontation works from social, or mental confrontations like chess, or if the systems has it codified as such economic confrontations such as two business competing or one attempting a take over.

@Arkandel said in Shadows Over Reno:
.

But complaining about +jobs being slow after we've been told they will be slow seems silly. In fact it can prove very counter-productive; I'd rather they take a long time than Wendigo being forced to hire bad people just to make the trains run on time.

Not on Reno so no dog in this fight but there is a rather huge difference to me between slow and no word in 6 days.
To me slow would be in the 3 to 4 day range, I agree hiring bad staff is not the answer but I don't think someone complaining on a six days with no progress is anyway in the wrong either.

@WTFE
To me Savage Worlds falls into what I call "The middle valley". What i mean by that is that is is not simple enough to be a really rules light game, but it is also not robust enough to engaging as a game. I have played in a couple of campaigns using it in groups where I was the only common element. Both times I had fun in the game for the story being told but every time that it was necessary to engage the mechanics the games became a chore. I would honestly rather just sit around a table telling a story without any sort of system then use Savage Worlds.
I can honestly say out of every system I have played, (nearly two dozen) Savage Worlds is the only one I would refuse to be in a game using.

@Arkandel
I don't see any conflict of interest involved. Now if Bob and Joe's player transfers info between the two of them then yes that is an issue but on him/her more than you as the runner.
If that doesn't take place and no one uses an alt to somehow benefit their other alt in the course of play then I see no issue with it. Now it might require some hoop jumping in storytelling to make sure Joe and Bob don't end up in the same place when it might make sense for them to through purely IC means but I don't see the situation in general as a problematic one.

@SG
Never played Labrynth Lord, but then I am not big on the OSR in general.
I will give Savage Worlds Credit for producing great settings many of them are well worth the read for enjoyment purposes and of course stealing ideas from.

@Arkandel
I would call that an attempted game coup since the goal seems to have been less to create a new game but to have the first game with better leadership and moving to a different game was the tool used to try and accomplish that goal.

Along the line of encouraging people to RP with others they maybe would not normally interact with, I think Arx deserves praise for their thing (I can't remember what it is called) that gives each player a list of name they get bonus XP for RPing with, while this also favors the more active players, I think it is a very good step to turning a game into a single community instead of a much of isolated sandboxes.
Not sure how this has worked out but I know in the Arx thread (where I heard of it) it got praise.

@Warma-Sheen said in House Rules vs Rules as Written:

Just because a storyteller isn't around constantly doesn't mean the merit no longer has value.

I never mentioned the value, though it is lessened in a MUSH environment after all in a TT it is usable in 100 percent of scenes, in a mush far fewer.

For every scene that does have an ST, the merit applies quite well - and those are usually the scenes you need the merit for. You won't get a benefit at the bar scene or the coffee shop scene or the TS scene, but you generally don't need the merit there.

You can get into a lot of trouble in non-ST scenes pretty much any PvP starts out that way, not to mention making political errors that can have pretty large repercussions and in my experience the scenes where real political work get done rarely have anything close to a ST around. Hate to break it to you but there are a hell of a lot more scenes besides random bar and TS that lack STs.

The way I would go if I was running something in that sort of setting is to clearly and upfront state the general feeling of the NPCs of the world but still allow Players to choose the roles they wish for PCs after all PCs by definition are the exceptions from the norm, and exist to overcome difficulties. That said I know I would be less likely to pick a setting that had elements I was not comfortable with, and I can totally understand players making the decision to avoid settings that would require them to deal with unpleasant aspects of live that they have to deal with every day of their lives.
And I also fell the need to say that while IC -isms might be part of a games theme or otherwise allowable and a perfectly acceptable part of RP, and instance of OOC behavior along those lines should be jumped on with extreme prejudice.

The big question is have you have Jill for a Guest yet?
That is when you know you have truly succeeded as a game.

@surreality said in MU Things I Love:

Dakota Urban. Really.

Wow are you sure he wasn't kinfolk? I mean he could have had the tribal tattoo on his back to better protect the veil.