Posts made by ThatOneDude

@admiral said in General Video Game Thread:

@auspice I haven't killed any citizens. It's still not hard, just time consuming. You dodge dodge dodge hit.

And the easiest way to stay relevant in combat is to raise your endurance and keep your weapons upgraded.

Yeah a good amount of stamina, dodge and strike, add in the heal and an attack like the claw or the blood spear and you are gold in combat.

I like using a two handed club in one slot and sword/pistol combo in the other weapons slot. Upgrading your weapons for more stun (club) or more blood soak (blades and stuff) has been a great help.

@lithium said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:

@thenomain Which is kind of silly, as I did not optimize my mage I am pretty sure my lower tier Changeling is way more powerful in swingy combat than my mage even though has less xp.

Oh well.

WHAT?! Mage is so OP'ed <this is my sarcastic voice>

@thenomain said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:

@ganymede

Fair.

I'm currently creating a character on a game far, far higher power than I'm comfortable with because this is what people around me are playing. I am angsting (loudly; sorry everyone around me) that I will not be able to justify this to the gatekeepers and therefore be asked to not play with those people around me.

So FH and SF may be the only two tier systems I've encountered that make a systematic difference. In my world, that's a justification to use them.

Just remember, if they ask you if you're the Keymaster, just say yes.

@ganymede said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:

@thenomain said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:

What is the goal of either method? That is, what is it you think that makes one method better than another?

I believe the goal of The Reach and Fallcoast is to allow everyone to get to a high XP level, irrespective of the number of alts at that level. Fate's Harvest is clearly stated to be a place where people can play high-Wyrd changelings, but they only allow one alt at the highest level.

I like Fate's Harvest better because it limits the number of high-powered alts per player.

Agreed, though in theory you could level up a tier 4 pc to tier 5 xp levels but it would take some time... I think it works and could be used as a model for these other games. More so since most games don't /really/ allow PK so the whole power disparity thing is less a thing. IE: There is less chance my 900xp Mage is going to want to destroy your 100xp Vampire. I say less chance because people are people.

@killer-klown said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:

It holds to 2e as well; though they did tone down Mage significantly with a few simple <and necessary> rules. 1e Werewolf, though? No amount of xp could make those measure up to the other supers.

With 2e I don't believe this to be true.

@killer-klown said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:

I said it earlier, but I really think the issue arises when you combine multisphere games with high xp.
In a single sphere setting, everyone can do basically the same thing; and high xp characters basically can do those same things too, just more of them. There are small boosts (Especially in Changeling with regards to high Wyrd bonuses and drawbacks) but by and large those balance one another out and don't always come into play.
When you're working with a multisphere game, though, you start off with people doing similiar things (mostly relying on skills and low level powers that boost those skills/rolls) but as the XP creeps higher and higher, what players can do with it begins to vary wildly; and it's not always the most balanced of distributions. For example, at starting level a Werewolf, a Mage and a Vampire are more or less on an even keel. For the lower end of the balance, the Werewolf tends to have the edge - especially in purely physical contests. In the midrange, vamps tend to excel because many of their powers don't have much that resists them and they can afford a wider spread. At the high end, Mages are practically godlike compared to the other two by sheer value of flexibility.
This also has the ancillary effect of wearing on staff; which does tend to kill even the most enthusiastic ST's desire to come up with stuff. You not only need to know All The Things, but you also need to know every little detail of the rules and how they interplay or play off one another for basically every power listed in every book you're STing for.

In this discussion you're referencing 1e nWoD Vampire, Werewolf and Mage, right?

@sunny said in Experienced Tiers or How much is too much?:

@thatonedude

Some people really don't enjoy high powered games, and mistake that lack of enjoyment as it being a problem with those games instead of just a preference. It's also potentially more difficult to manage plots with a wide experience disparity, though I've never found that part of things personally challenging.

But there seems to be this /bad fun/ or /wrong fun/ feel in a lot of what is said related to high xp games. As stated above in a situation like a game such as Fate's Harvest you can have alts at various tiers which means even if you're Joe that hates a powerful PC you can make a tier one PC and gain your trickle of XP while I can app in my high powered pc and do my thing.

What we gain is in social RP there is people to play. In events we don't have to go to the same events (high xp vs low).

I think my point is ... With games requiring players it seems that Fate's Harvest approach may be a model to draw the most players. Also, to reply to the question posed in the title: No amount of XP is too much.

Agreed on the FH thing.

It's weird to me when people seem to have a hard time with high xp games, more so when everyone gets the same high XP. On Fall Coast everyone gets to high XP and then slows... Fate's Harvest you can start at any tier and play whatever you want.

Is it jealousy? If everyone has low XP and it trickles in... everyone is basically in the same boat as the Fallcoast model right? Just without the XP?

In a discussion about this last night there was something said that made me laugh, while being a bit sad but also rang true. The comment was something like: Tiered XP is great because I can play the character I want right out the gate before the game dies/shuts down.

http://fatesharvest.com/w/XP_Tiers

900xp max in a 1e game. Seems to have worked fine since the game is still up and running.

I don't know why people are so scared of XP.

@apu
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/TabletopGame/BeastThePrimordial

A Storytelling Game of Endless Appetite.

Beast: the Primordial is the tenth game line in the New World of Darkness, and the first to be released since it changed its name to Chronicles of Darkness. You play a Beast, sometimes also known as the Children or Begotten. An embodiment of humanity's primal nightmares, your soul has been replaced by a primordial nightmare monster known as a Horror possessed of a deep-seated hunger. However, your hunger needn't manifest as direct hunger - it can be something like hoarding, or making someone understand they're prey. You must manage your hunger with care, choosing whether to satiate yourself and become more focused, or go hungry and become more dangerous. However, if you don't fulfill your hunger, your Horror will rampage through the collective dreamscape, disrupting people's lives and inducing intense nightmares, which will cause Heroes to awaken, hunt you down, and try to kill you.

One of the most notable features in this game is how Crossover-friendly it is: all previous entries in the New World of Darkness were built with the possibility of being compatible, but Beast is the first explicitly designed to encourage it, giving the Begotten an entire set of powers known as "kinship" specifically designed to make them interact with other supernatural templates and dedicating an entire section of the book to explaining how they would interact with the protagonists of the other gamelines: the Begotten believe all supernatural beings (except Demons) are related to them, and as such treat them as kin.

@coin said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

@thatonedude said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

@ganymede said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

@thatonedude said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

Problems with Staff/Player interactions is perception, attitude, and intent. Maybe that sentence should be the perception of attitude and intent.

If a player decided by fiat to roll a pool into a +job requesting information and then told me what they should get and how it is to be delivered, I would perceive that the player felt entitled to shit and intended to be a prick about it.

ST: So, you enter the office. What do you do?
PL: I'm going to look around to figure out how he is going to rig the election. Here's my Investigation roll, where I get 3 successes. Now, tell me every intricacy of that plan.
ST: ... this is the janitor's office.

Right, but again... Perception of intent/attitude. I don't know the player that did this job in the example and I only know @Arkandel from his posts here.

With that said: What if that player didn't know how to move forward? What if they asked someone else what they should do and that person said open a job and CC the person that ran the event/plot? What if a million other things that wasn't the person being a tool was what really was going down? Granted I know there is the possibility this person /decided by fiat/ but there is also the possibility that he/she didn't.

My point is as a player, that attitude is felt and it has to be part of what makes this whole thing a problem. The ST/Player/Staff "issue".

You're missing this bit, I think:

@arkandel said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

The problem in this case was in not consulting with the ST first to discuss the scope of the roll, or to accept the range of information they received out of it; that could have served (and even after the fact I tried to nudge it that way) as an introduction to a PrP about finding a different library to do research in, discuss the time it takes to go through the material, and so on.

Now, I could be assuming, but knowing @Arkandel, chances are he tried to mitigate the situation and the other person was unreasonable.

I'm not missing that bit as I said:

With that said: What if that player didn't know how to move forward? What if they asked someone else what they should do and that person said open a job and CC the person that ran the event/plot? What if a million other things that wasn't the person being a tool was what really was going down? Granted I know there is the possibility this person /decided by fiat/ but there is also the possibility that he/she didn't.

Meaning, what if they asked someone while @Arkandel was offline? I use that as an example since when I was new to Mu*ing back when I was just a young private in the Army I had a situation where I asked a player how to do X and they gave me bad info. This is a possibility... You see where I'm headed? Even in a hypothetical situation it seems impossible that a player could be anything other than wrong. Or at least that's how I read a lot of what gets said. But! I don't know if that's what is really intended.

@ganymede said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

@thatonedude said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

Problems with Staff/Player interactions is perception, attitude, and intent. Maybe that sentence should be the perception of attitude and intent.

If a player decided by fiat to roll a pool into a +job requesting information and then told me what they should get and how it is to be delivered, I would perceive that the player felt entitled to shit and intended to be a prick about it.

ST: So, you enter the office. What do you do?
PL: I'm going to look around to figure out how he is going to rig the election. Here's my Investigation roll, where I get 3 successes. Now, tell me every intricacy of that plan.
ST: ... this is the janitor's office.

Right, but again... Perception of intent/attitude. I don't know the player that did this job in the example and I only know @Arkandel from his posts here.

With that said: What if that player didn't know how to move forward? What if they asked someone else what they should do and that person said open a job and CC the person that ran the event/plot? What if a million other things that wasn't the person being a tool was what really was going down? Granted I know there is the possibility this person /decided by fiat/ but there is also the possibility that he/she didn't.

My point is as a player, that attitude is felt and it has to be part of what makes this whole thing a problem. The ST/Player/Staff "issue".

@arkandel said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

@thatonedude said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

Do you staff on Reno? This post reminds me a lot of the way they run their game.

I do not.

Woe is me, players are the worst.

I'm unclear why that's what you took from this; players aren't a homogeneous bunch who all act and behave the same way, but certain behaviors aren't great and they should be pointed out, examined and if needed remedied.

Why would this person try to do research or use his / her skills/merits in a game? They should just sit and wait to be spoon fed whatever it is the ST is providing.

On the contrary, PrP participants should be proactive - that's much appreciated (and fairly rare). The problem in this case was in not consulting with the ST first to discuss the scope of the roll, or to accept the range of information they received out of it; that could have served (and even after the fact I tried to nudge it that way) as an introduction to a PrP about finding a different library to do research in, discuss the time it takes to go through the material, and so on.

The expectation to break a plot wide open with one roll of the dice is what was unreasonable. Being unable to do so doesn't take anything away from player agency, it simply allows the ST the ability to pace the story as it transitions through its arcs, and hopefully it makes any achievements more meaningful.

Sure, the entire thing could be unlocked by one person with 1 success on a downtime +job, but it'll probably be more memorable - and fun - if the characters had to sneak into their own boss' headquarters to get access to materials he had explicitly forbidden them to read, find ties to a conspiracy, figure out how to eliminate evidence of their presence and race against the clock to get out before they are discovered.

But ... more fun for who?

@arkandel said in #WIDWW pt 2 - ST, Player, or staff?:

@coin Sometimes people like to play a game of chicken. Am I going to kill them off in some random Wednesday evening PrP? No? Then hellz yeah they'll stick around to fight when I say "you can hear reinforcements arriving! Thankfully after you rummaged through the Bad Guy's desk you discovered a secret passage out" two and a half hours after we began.

Some throw the rulebook in my face. Anecdote: Back on BITN I ran a PrP about a portal into some weird-ass mystery dimension. One of the mortals in it afterwards made a +job (without consulting with me first), CC'ed me to it, +rolled Academics into the +job and then paged me to give them the answers about how the portal was made and how you can open one or close one yourself. When I tried to work with that by offering some tidbits of information it turned that no, they wanted the full thing. Look, Academics, Library 2, 3 successes, gimme the full manual goddammit.

Obviously as you get more experienced you learn to handle these people but it still serves to explain why STs are hard to find, new ones are shy to start running things, and the ones already playing run things for their own circles since they won't have to handle anyone.

It probably also helps explain why new games keep running into the same loop of trying to do something different thematically but end up looking like the previous five MU*; it's because the players they get are treating it exactly like their last five MU*, too. There's a lot of effort of behalf of staff to change that mindset, and it's not surprising most don't even try.

like @Arkandel says (god that hurt to type)

Your pain... it sustains me.

Do you staff on Reno? This post reminds me a lot of the way they run their game.

Woe is me, players are the worst.

Why would this person try to do research or use his / her skills/merits in a game? They should just sit and wait to be spoon fed whatever it is the ST is providing. They should wait with bated breath for more plot to be tossed their way ... if it never is they should praise me when I deem to include them in whatever, blah blah blah.

Problems with Staff/Player interactions is perception, attitude, and intent. Maybe that sentence should be the perception of attitude and intent.

I like it to be more in the Dresden Files range.

Let me get yelled at by mods for saying , the same site hosting that chart has a web entry spell builder for 2e that's way easier ... 2e Mage win?

@shincashay said in MU Things I Love:

@thatonedude said in MU Things I Love:

@shincashay said in MU Things I Love:

RPing with someone for 6 hours and no romance, no ts, just developing story.

Yup, I'm stalking them now. #letmebeyourrppartner4life

THIS COULD HAVE BEEN US! >.>;

This will be us.

@cobaltasaurus

@vulgarkitten said in MU Things I Love:

@thatonedude said in MU Things I Love:

@shincashay said in MU Things I Love:

RPing with someone for 6 hours and no romance, no ts, just developing story.

Yup, I'm stalking them now. #letmebeyourrppartner4life

THIS COULD HAVE BEEN US! >.>;

It should've been us
Shoulda been a fire, shoulda been the perfect storm
It should've been us
Coulda been the real thing
Now we'll never know for sure, ooh
We were crazy, but amazing, baby we both know
It should've been us, us
It, it, it should've been us