Posts made by ThatGuyThere

@il-volpe said in 'The Magicians' mechanics with FS3:

@auspice I am aware of that. I thought that Ares and its dice-mechanics were called Ares and not FS3.

I'm not speaking of Ares, since I don't know much about it and suspect I may not wish to use it.

From my understanding Ares is a code base designed by Faraday that uses the newest version of FS3 also brought to us by Faraday. I haven't spent a lot of time looking at the newest FS3 since I have yet to play on a game that utilized it, (BSG and pirates aren't really my things) it looks thye the skill range has flattened but not the core mechanic seems to be unchanged.

@insomniac7809 said in Real World Peeves, Disgruntlement, and Irks.:

There was a quote in Homicide: A Year On the Killing Streets from an interviewee during an investigation: "I'm shocked he did it, but I'm not surprised he did it, you know?"

I know that feeling, there are a couple of people that I have known that I would not blink if I saw on the news that they had killed someone, none has but if they did my response would not be surprised. And their are some people I know that even if they confessed I would have trouble believing would have ever harmed a person.

@aria
A transhumanist sci fi RPG that was free on the games website for a while, but I think the ended when the new edition came out. The setting and stuff were neat but I never played it so can't comment on the systems except to say the seems on the complex side of things from a read through.

@goldfish said in Creative Outlets:

I play a character that is usually a jeans and t-shirt guy. But lo and behold, in THIS scene, he's wearing a suit. Maybe it's pressed and fresh. Maybe it's rumpled and the tie is undone. Why is this character wearing a suit all of a sudden?

I agree with the sentiment but not the execution, if my PC who is a jeans and t-shirt guy is wearing a suit then I will have his suit desc on. Someone waiting for me to pose on outfit in a scene would be waiting forever.
I don't really mind them being posed but I am much more likely to look at something if i want to refresh my memory on a desc rather than scroll up so what the desc says will be what I tend to be roleplaying with anyway.

On the subject of phone scams I got one recently about my credit card account at least that was what the person said at the beginning I got to shock the scammer with being someone that does not have a credit card. (Due to past trouble with them once I got out of the hole I cancelled every one of them.)

@ghost
I am so looking forward to the episode where we see how the Gang get screw out of seeing the game. Because as we know nothing good can happen for the Gang. We saw that they missed the Phillies winning the World Series locked in a walk in freezer (I think that was what it was it has been a while) so I really hope it is something worse than that.

@three-eyed-crow said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

@faraday
In my experience, unfortunately, you'll get more complaints and bad feelings about "exclusion" if a private event is posted publicly where everyone can see, than you will if who can see it is locked.

Not only that but most people don't like to be exclusionary but sometimes the tools point that way, for example I will occasionally run short plots. My participation limits for them is a hard max of four in a scene. that is just my limit for what I manage in a scene without it feeling stressful as hell. If you put up a +event with a max signups of four i have found two things happen, it tends to get filled quickly and then you catch a lot of why can't i be in your event too, and then on the night of the thing you are lucky if you have 3 of the 4 who signed up on. So I tend to not use +events but @mail to do the scheduling which then limits it to those I know well enough to personally ask.

@ortallus
That was right about when I started. Never touched the Shadow Run corner of Mu*dom, since the game itself doesn't appeal to me.

@ortallus
I have been mushing for 25 years.
Edit: The first place I heard of that used them was Anomaly which was a trek MU* . I never played there but I do remember the ads for it when it opened.

@quinn said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

@ThatGuyThere How do you do that though without having a staff member always be around in every room any RP is happening in just in case someone wants to RP researching something related to a plot? Seriously asking.

Mostly it was done with a quick page or by mail. I know there is little real difference to me but the page/mail route seems like normal player to GM interaction, and +request feels like filling out forms. I am pretty sure this is due to when I started mushing. Back then pretty much everything was handled by mail so I learned to accept it, +jobs didn't exist til I was set in my ways so I avoid it.

@quinn said in Encouraging Proactive Players:

I Some people will NEVER legwork a thing.

I think I am one of those people. I am more than happy to chase down plots through scenes but the second it becomes put in a request thing i tend to drift away. I don't mind RPing being in a library looking for things but the whole +jobs structure has always reminded me a bit too much like game homework so I tend to avoid it.
Which leads into my thing for encouraging active players eliminate bureaucracy whenever possible.

@seraphim73 said in Social Systems:

If you have, for instance, just "Melee" and "Ranged" skills, I think that "Convince" or even "Social" is totally fine. But if you have "Blades," "Bludgeons," "Spears," and "Unarmed," or "Pistols," "Rifles," and "Throwing," then you should probably have "Persuade" and "Deceive" or "Convince" and "Schmooze" or some other words that give you 2-3 social skills.

I think Theno is the one that used to say game design is mind control, in some cases I definitely agree and this is a good example.
If you have a lot more combat than social skills you are conditioning the players to view combat the bulk of the focus, where if you have a Fight skill and seven varieties of social interaction skills you are conditioning your players to view the social side as an intricate dance while the fighty side as a side aspect.

Kind of off topic but I think i realized one of the big issues with social systems and that is the time scale, if PC X and PC Y are in a physical competition be it basketball or fighting or a 100 meter dash that is done in one scene. It takes less time to happen IC usually than it does to pose out with out without mechanics involved.
A lot of real social conflicts are not that way, they might never be fully resolved, if i am playing a Social Darwinist industrialist and someone else is playing and idealist city council person we might never have those PCs agree with each other but over the course of time I might convince them to vote for a rezoning that benefits my bottom line and I might be convinced to give to charity and preserve a historic building over making money but turning that land into a strip mall but it is unlikely that even those wins happen over the course of time and likely multiple interactions.

@Bobotron
I have not read Danse Macabre sicne I think it was a Vamp book and not a big vamp person, I do like the Doors system from 2nd ed. NWoD in theory but think it is a bit heavily tilted toward offence over defense but then most of NWoD is.

@ortallus
Yeah and just like in combat if poses warranted it it bonus or penalties could be used, in your example the smurf with a nerf bat would suffer a healthy minus against a human sized person, though Papa Smurf with what could be a magic potion might not.
It would give designers and coders another system to implement which would be the biggest downside. Mechanically, I would handle it pretty close to combat so players just have to learn one set of mechanics for example if punching someone was dex + unarmed against difficuty, then convincing someone to vote your way the next council meeting would be cha + politics vs difficulty with the result swaying but not necessarily winning with one shot.
I think the big issue is as has been pointed out most games spend pages and pages on combat but very little on social conflicts. Even NWoD which has plenty of social situations by design spends a quarter of pages on it then it does on combat in the core book.

@ortallus
I would tend to prefer a beefier system than just a one role decides thing, after all most combats are not decided with one attack, at least between folks of roughly the same ability. (High XP WoD being a notable exception but the draw of WoD has never been the system for me.)

In the case of the intimidate I would prefer some sort of emotional health track just like most games have physical ones, the first blow might not cause someone to crack but enough time and they will, that is after all how interrogation works in RL, not many people confess right away, after ten hours most will (often even if nothing is there to confess to.) much like one punch doesn't end most boxing matches (early Tyson being the exception) but over the course of a few rounds a lot of them do.

@ortallus said in Social Systems:

What he is saying there is that social systems shouldn't be included because they're not used for the majority of situations where mechanical arbitration is needed.

No it is not, my first post in this thread (which you replied to in fact) was replying to someone who said that Social skills should only be used on npcs. And I said that would be stupid because it would make them horribly cost inefficient compared to physical that could be used on both.
I am very much saying that social systems should be used in all appropriate situations rather against PCs or NPCs.

@ortallus said in Social Systems:

If you're spending the majority of your time interacting with PCs as needing mechanical arbitration, you're way too aggressive. Or they are.

I never said the majority of interactions required mechanics in fact I would say less than a third does but I still think that PCs shouldn't be magically exempt from systems, if something works on an NPC it should have the same odds of working on a similarly stated PC.

If you're spending the majority of your time interacting with NPCs as needing mechanical arbitration, you're a gamer. Congratulations.

The majority time I interact with an NPC is due to plot either staff run or player run. So yeas I am likely a gamer but so is everyone else who places an RPG, the G stands for Game

@ortallus
I think you are misunderstanding my position. I am not against social skills I am against the idea that they are should only work on NPCs.
And yes I do think if they are an NPC only thing then they are mostly pointless since I would say 75 % of mushing (at least in my experience) has dealt with the interaction between PCs. True not all of it is diced out or need to be but I think that any system that is being used should be used for the majority of situations where mechanical arbitration is needed/desired.

@ortallus said in Social Systems:

@thatguythere said in Social Systems:

@wildbaboons said in Social Systems:

@arkandel I agree... but why I like things affecting NPCs instead of PCs. There was a whole thread on this not that long ago that we don't need to rehash.

My question would be if social can only be used on NPCs but physical can be used on PCs and NPCs and they cost the same , you would be doing yourself a disservice to not buy physical over social.
Especially because in most RP environments a well written pose describing IC awkwardness will win you more friends than a poorly written one describing social awesomeness, so you can follow the mechanical rules pose your low social stats yet get the full benefit of having higher ones except for the occasional use on an NPC.

So, I guess you're going to beat up the NPC to get better prices on goods then? I mean, I guess it could work? Once?

Or steal them after all thieving most often gets listed as a physical skill.
And lets face it how often on a MU do you actually barter with someone for a price? Maybe it is the games I am on but most of the places I have been things like equipment get handled in jobs. Or if it is a plot specific do-dad is it likely from an NPC introduced in that plot never to be seen again once the plot is over so how many times does it need to work?

@faraday said in Social Systems:

And why is that? Because most players don't like to lose unless they're forced to by mechanics. Otherwise the PCs in a statless game would choose to lose (sometimes) for the sake of drama, furthering the plot, providing challenges to overcome, etc.

Duh. No offense meant but no one likes to lose at anything, but any game has situations where sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. Hell chess has no randomness at all but still winners and losers.
Without the social inducements and threat of social alienation you would see a lot more people god-moding on consent places.
But to the stats are less about winning and losing and more the fun that comes with the absurd happening due to random luck. Not about winning and losing.

Take for example a scene that has happened to me multiple times across ever superhero game, lets meet foil a crime and talk. Standard superhero meeting thing, and one that bore the piss out of me due to the lack of stats. I want to get to the hopefully interesting part of the talking because a fight poses are basically pointless preamble since the result is obvious.
With dice I love that sort of scene because there is that chance that something interesting can occur during the fight.

@faraday said in Social Systems:
Everyone's fallible - even Navy SEALs. Your ace sniper missing ten shots in a row for no darn reason other than you kept rolling a 1? Nope, sorry, that doesn't make any more sense than a (insert political hot button topic here) advocate suddenly changing her mind just because somebody rolled a 20 on their persuasion roll.

Yes but if I know I am making the shot before hand why bother with it, just fast forward to the part that is in doubt.
I don't want to RP a social scene where someone was like alright we will meet and this is how it goes, and I don't she how RPing a fight where the winner is already decided. To me that takes the entirety of the draw of RP away which is the possibility of the unexpected.