Best posts made by ThatGuyThere

It also comes down to what role you want XP to play in your game. If the goal to have XP simulate the skills the character picks up and improves through RP, or is the goal of XP to provide the player the ability to have their characters abilities increase and provide the player with goals to engage with, both are valid ideas of game design but are at odd with each other. Those are two ways of seeing XP I thought of off the top of my head but I am sure there are many others as well.
Personally I see XP as an out of character construct, mainly because I find most learning and teaching scene to be dull as dishwater so learning my characters do is always off camera unless game policy mandates a log in which case i put up with two hours or so of bland RP.

On the topic of other ways of advancement Star Crusade had an interesting in theory method, at the end of each week you would write up essentially small xp justifications, (can't remember what term they used) and then you would get to credit towards raising those skills. You were limited to a set number per week but the justification could be both from on screen and off screen activities. I think the off screen part is essential.

For me it is simple I do not change the preset difficulty so that ends up being normal.
If i got game that was already pre-set hard or easy I would likely leave it there.
On a rare occasion I will lower the difficulty if I am totally stuck but more often in that case I just set the game aside and move on to the next one, I only change difficulty like that if I am near the end and really want ot see the end of the story.
The exception to this is sport games or fighting games, those I tend to start on easy to get the hang of the controls then up the diff as I need to so the game presents a challenge.

@Rook
I think it comes down to how much would the loss the thing impact your life.
Without video games I would save some money and watch more TV but not much would change.
If i stopped the other forms of gaming it would be like when I stopped collecting comics there would be a social impact, I would lose contact with friends who I am mainly connected to from gaming or at if the contact was maintain the relationship would suffer. That is where the difference lies to me.
To me there is a big difference between a career and a hobby so I agree with you on the cop thing, and would say anyone who makes a living playing video games is definitely a gamer whether they call themselves that or not.

@Arkandel
I agree for the most part but with one caveat, using the mage thing for example, I have no problem if someone running a game decides hey I am running a low power level (for mage) game so capping spheres at 4.
I don't think any game should necessarily make make the ultimate, in your words, powers available but I do thing games should communicate when they are not going to use the full scope of the system.
Another example would be if you were using a MUSH using the D+D system there is nothing wrong with capping PC level at 12, or any other number, but you should communicate that to your perspective players clearly and directly both to so they can decide if that changes their desire to play and so that they can make build decisions based on that endpoint. If class x has the most awesome 13th level ability you know from the jump that the ability won't come into play so while you can still play class x there is no surprise aww crap I can never get that ability.

Even on full non-consent games, you still have some say just follow the rules to a tee. For example somebody wants to do something creepy the squicks you and won't accept anything else, pretty much every game i have ever seen with mechanics has had the caveat that you can have staff present to handle rules things. Pretty much when things break down say I want staff to handle the rules for this scene. It is completely in line with non-consent but will get the person to leave and find easier prey every time I have tried it. Usually staff is way overworked and no one wants to stick around waiting for them to be able to judge the scene.
It also takes away the OOC power trip aspect because you are effectively taking the power from them and putting i into a third party.

Not to be overly negative but if I say a +event with a bunch of hashtags, or as I like to all it pound symbols, I would immediately know the event was not for me regardless of the content it was advertising/warning about.

On the actual topic I don't think I could be completely emotionally disconnected from a character I played the amount i play an average MU character but I also put the responsibility of knowing where my acceptable lines and limits are and communicating that to others.
There are people in this hobby who will stop n those set up boundaries however, either through malicious intent or because they are just flowing with the scene and when that happens it is on the person transgressing though boundaries.
There is also a way to properly behave when you are feeling the emotions and not just flail everywhere regardless of what you may be feeling at the time. For example the one time I had a character PKed it was a character I had played for over 3 years and I was literally crying as I was typing out the end of the scene but I was not a jerk, the kill was fair both mechanically and through the story being told so I did not yell at folks, did not put my issues and have never said anything against the others involved. It would have also been fair for me to go hey I can't RP this out I'm just going FTB here.

Not a coder so no idea how hard it would be to implement but I would include a separate action rather then adding making the enemy easier to hit with suppress.
My reason for this is not really a game thing but a brain thing, suppression fire is not done with the intent on harm but rather to keep the enemy's head down usually to facilitate movement or prevent the other guy form moving. Not sure if it is already in use but maybe call the action a feint to make the other guy easier to hit since the purpose of a feint is to set up the later attack.

@WTFE said in FS3:

True randomness sadly, given the flaws in the human brain's construction, never appears random.

^ This can not be stated enough when looking at random results.

Human brains have evolved to notice patterns, there are numerous survival advantages to this, however our brains are good enough that we will find patterns to things where there are no patterns.
For example even though I know full well that this is not there case there are still moments I am half convinced that the roller on Fallcoast knows when I am making an important roll and chooses those moments to crap out on me. Minor rolls I will do great big moment I have bad luck. This is 100 percent luck and possibly not even the case as greater amounts of rolls have likely averaged things out by now but my brain noticed a pattern early on and sticks with that belief.
I have also had players accusing another player in a table top I ran because he was lucky, all roles where done where i could see him and over the course of the campaign he was no luckier than anyone else but he got all his luck during boss fights so two other players became convinced he was fudging roles. My response which annoyed them was, if he is good enough to roll good on cu he would be going to the boats every Saturday making money not playing D+D in a basement with us.

It is true we often will notice the oddness more often on line than off but there are two reasons for this, first and most obvious is that there are a lot fewer rolls so there are less opportunities for actual results to regress towards expected, and a great feeling of lack of control since we cannot perform our lucky dice rolls. (True not all gamers have a dice roll ritual but I have known enough that do, including myself that I beleive a significant minority do.)

@kitteh said in FS3:

I'm not sure FS3 gets singled out here since no game system (that I know of) is performing 1000 rolls and averaging them to determine success/failure.

I think part of the reason it gets singled out is that it is only played on line. For example while WoD MU* besides combat do not really involve more +rolls than those using FS3 a large portion of the WoD MU* players also have played it in table top so their minds contain a much larger sample size and that experience colors how they look at the results on the game.

Another reason to use familiar-ish dice mechanics over more complex math even wen used on computers is Cgen.
There is a fairly sizable portion of MU* who absolutely agonize over C-gen, (Thankfully I am not one of them) and worry that a poor decision during the process will end up crippling their character. (In some systems it can) this is with pretty straight forward mechanics present a complex mathematical system that is unfamiliar along with the rest of c-gen will lead to a lot a folks hitting a big wall when they try to make characters.

@Lithium said in CofD and Professional Training:

That's how I feel about it anyways, we have st's to judge combat scenes, why not st's judging social combat? It costs the same XP, it should be just as useful in situations where it applies.

the big reason comes down to time. Yes i am sure if I am on a game and get into a combat or a social combat I can request staff arbitration. For either one it is not likely to happen right away so the scene would most likely get paused and go to jobs. While I would be fine with that if a conflict cannot be resolved between the players but past experience has shown me that if the scene has to be paused most of the time (2/3 roughly) the whole scene will get retconned rather than brought to resolution.

@Misadventure
Never been a fan of allowing respecs myself. And this is coming from someone who made a Werewolf once without the skills that two of the three gifts i got in c-gen used.

@Ghost said in CofD and Professional Training:

I'm gonna venture out to say that a lot of the time the draw for professional training, from the player perspective, is to get that 9/again or the other perks that come with it. They usually want those perks to be used for augmentation of other rolls. A 9/again for social rolls means shit on a game where social combat doesnt take place, but comes in very handy in say, Changeling Contract rolls that use said social stats.

Regardless of the rest of the issue if Professional Training were allowed on a game I would definitely restrict the benefits to mundane uses of the skill, not power activations since while those often roll skills they rarely entail the actual IC use of skills in a manner in which Professional training would be applicable.

Edit to add: I somewhat agree with Gany while i might allow it in a multi-sphere game I would limit it to a mortal only merit.

@faraday said in Identifying Major Issues:

@ThatGuyThere I like to think of it more like showing up in a new town at a gaming store (or a con) looking to play.

That is fair enough, but while I have played with strangers at a con, I do so because there is little risk (a bad time) and the potential for reward. I certainly wouldn't give the other folks at the table my phone number. And while I would show up to a con to play, I wouldn't say I trusted the folks running the thing either.

@HelloProject said in Identifying Major Issues:

I've been on probably dozens of games that require email, due to it being a general norm in some areas of the hobby. I've never really seen anything bad come out of it. Also who doesn't have like 10 burner emails? It's not that heavy.

I can get a burner phone to give the number to people too but that doesn't mean I think handing out a phone number should be a requirement for 90 percent of things.
And yeah I have a e-mail I give games, it is a throwaway not connected to any real information of mine that I never check and delete all in once every three months or so. Giving it to a game serves no purpose I do so to get to the playing part but it benefits any game not at all, since it is the least effective way to get info to me. And benefits me not at all because any info sent there will not be seen by me. It is the electronic equivalent of saying have a nice day as someone leaves a store.

@Derp
Hate to break it to you but you don't have to give google a phone number to get an account. I have a gmail account and have never given them a phone number.

@Derp said in Identifying Major Issues:

Click here to login with Facebook.

Or as I like to it, see which of my 'friends' are stupid button.

Sadly the only way to not have skills with ginormous areas that are covered such as Crafts, or the worst offender to me, Academics, would be to have ginormous skill list that breaks them out which brings the other bad headache of wow if I want to cover the skill set of someone who passed all their gen eds in college I need a bunch more points then starting characters get.

@Meg
I agree with you there I think things that are punishable should be punished regardless of venue. In my first point i even used the example of plotting an unjust pk here as a theoretical example of something that should be punished.

Now as to the reputation I would not punish someone for spreading lies about non-game matters period regardless of the place they did so. I would punish someone for lying about game matters regardless of where they did so. For ex, Joe cheats on his RL wife. Not gonna care. Joe uses OOC info to win, I would look into the matter and either Joe would get talked to about using OOC info or person spreading the story would get talked to about making up lies.

@Derp
I know you might not believe this considering we tend to not agree at all with each other, but I do mean this in a constructive manner. While I believe you and the rest of staff on the game have the best of intentions and goals, it does not matter. I, and I am sure many others reading have heard multiple staffers on multiple games say the same thing and have seen it all end the way it usually does.
Before knowing she was their if asked about FH my answer would have been I know nothing but probably worth a shot to try it. Now if asked about it I would have to tell the person I would recommend they avoid the place. I could do nothing else in good conscience.