Best posts made by The Sands

@bored said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

The linear vs. exponential CG thing is just it's own category of problem, and one that game designers should have learned better by now (sorry @faraday). Or maybe they have learned, but its the easier option. Path of least resistance.

There are huge advantages to an exponential system. The biggest is that it helps to minimize the gap between your dinos and your (relatively) new players. For an example if your system assumes you're using a simple 2^X system for the amount of XP required to gain a level than a person who has been playing for 2 years has a 1 point advantage over someone who has been playing for 1 year and a 2 point advantage over someone who has been playing for 6 months.

It also means that while there's an advantage to being specialized but it isn't overwhelming. My knight has spent all of his points on Sword and nothing else. He's got an advantage over someone else who has spent half their points on Sword and the other half has been split up between Axe, Crossbow, and Lance, but his advantage isn't overwhelming and in fact there's every opportunity he will lose in a fight (because a smart opponent will stand back and shoot me. Why engage me in the skill I spent all my point on?)

You'll have to tune aspects of your game so that a 1 or 2 point advantage ends up about where you want, of course. If the Challenge Resolution System is roll 1d6 and add your score than a 2 point advantage is pretty significant. If it is roll 1d100 and add your score than the advantage is miniscule. I'm a huge fan of using a sigmoidal probability curve, but that's a whole different thing.

The problem that this system has is the math is harder than simple linear math. If your using 2^X it's pretty simple but you may discover that 1.5^X or 2.8^X works better for the progression that you want. I'll be real honest and say that this is a component I would normally 'hide' from the players. I would just have them dump XP into the stat as they want. Of course this means you have to use a discontinuous system (meaning having a skill with a value of 3.42 actually means something, so most systems where you are rolling X dice go right out the window).

The other thing you really can't do is use a linear system for character generation. You need to use a system more along the lines of 'everyone starts with 1 year of XP, buy your stats'. Otherwise you will absolutely have people min-max the Hell out of the system. It's not that they are bad people. You've created a system that encourages that.

Incidentally, if I absolutely had to build a MU system from scratch this is probably the position I would start from. Attributes would never add directly to a skill to determine if you successfully used the skill. Instead they would modify the XP that has been spent. The most dexterous guy in the world is still going to suck pretty badly the first time he tries to drive because he has absolutely no skill at it, however it won't take him very much XP before he has a high enough score to qualify for a license. Since the system is geometric people won't end up sacrificing much from their 'critical skills' so they can handle basic tasks like driving, reading, or doing basic math.

Sure, if someone wants to sacrifice those skills so that they can get an edge on being a swordsman they could, but the gain would be pretty minimal. More importantly, if they decide to 'buy off' the fact they are missing those skills they will end up at the same point as someone who started with them and took slightly lower critical skills. There is no incentive to sacrifice something and then immediately buy it off after you've cleared CG. Sacrifice it and keep the sacrifice? Sure. Not take the skill at CG because you know you'll have the XP in a week to buy it and you'll end up with higher stats? Not so much.

@Wretched I wonder if they are going to make mention of the fact that he was also the first Trickster for the Arrowverse's Flash.

(edit: I should add, when they did this is was pretty cool because he also played the Trickster in the 1990 Flash).

@thenomain said in Repurposing a Tabletop RPG for MU* Play:

My general coder response to that is: You worry what's best for the game, let me worry about how possible it is.

The danger with that is if someone else has to maintain your code after you're gone. Lots of exceptions can make that difficult.

Honestly though, while I emphasized issues with coding I think it is only a small portion of the problem. Nearly always when you start doing things like saying 'well, this Bloodline is special and the only people who get access to the supa-sektrit Discipline it's because in the back of your brain you don't want everyone running around with it and the reason for that is because deep down you know it is unbalanced or broken (again, this doesn't really apply in a situation where you decide every single Bloodline gets an exclusive Discipline. In that case you are probably more interested in making sure each Bloodline feels unique).

Even speshul Disciplines aren't really the issue, however. The area you get into big trouble is when, as happens with WoD, you have one system by which the Vampires build their magical items, a second system by which the Werewolves build their magical items, and a third system by which Mages build their magical items. I'm not really referring to the specific rolls or conditions that have to be met to create the items but simply the mechanism that determines 'this is a 1 point magic item' and 'this is a 2 point magic item'.

When you do that you end up with one group that makes items far stronger than another, usually. Now this can be all right if that's the plan (e.g. You want Mages making more powerful magic items because that's their thang) but that usually isn't what happens. Instead the group that makes the strongest item is whatever group has the poorest written rules and there's no intent to who actually makes the strongest items. Instead, if you want mages to make stronger items then just give them some extra points to work with or something, but use the same system.

This is good for a variety of reasons. A) it is way easier to code since you only need to write the code once. B) It's one system with modifications so it balances against itself. Trying to balance three disparate systems against one another is a nightmare. C) Players who move from one sphere to another don't have to completely relearn the system.

Are these things 'simple'? No, not really. In fact I wrote up a magical item system for Fear and Loathing that people pretty much both Feared and Loathed and I'm sorry about that. I thought it was the best way to keep things balanced but I really was never able to find that sweet spot of design that people seemed to enjoy while providing what I thought was a good balance.

So instead I would call the principle K.I.C.K. (for Keep It Consistent, Knucklehead). If I had to 'redesign' WoD for a MU* I would probably do something like pick Vampire and then make the other spheres work in more or less similar fashion. Roughly the same number of 'Disciplines' for each sphere and the abilities of the respective 'Disciplines' would probably equate across the board (meaning that if the Mages have the ability to gain Roteskill on their rolls because of one of their 'Disciplines' then the Vampires would probably have some 'Discipline' that provides roughly the same thing. It doesn't mean everything is exactly identical. Werewolves don't need to steal Rage from humans. Mages don't frenzy. However there should be enough similarity that while someone in the Vampire sphere might wish they had some ability that only Mages get there won't be any feeling that 'Well, yeah, of course she threw 30 dice. She's a Sin-Eater'.

@Wretched I need to get a food dehydrator at some point.

Since people can't stop bringing it up in the Min-Maxing thread:

@wretched said in Game Design: Avoiding Min-Maxing:

@the-sands But that's the entire reason modifiers exist in nWoD. For situational advantages/disadvantages. They would still have the same dice pool for treating a gunshot wound, for the reasons I previously mentioned, but a test on the subject matter that the int 5 guy never actually went to school on, I would most definitely say he would take a -modifier for.

That is not a situation modifier. Situation modifiers are this such as 'you're operating in the dark' or 'people are shooting at you' and they apply to everyone evenly. 'I'm going to give you a -2 to this that I'm not giving to another player' is just being a douche (N.B.: There could be valid reasons for one character to suffer a penalty while the other doesn't, such as if the nurses only speak Spanish, but what you're saying is 'sure, you've got the same chance to do anything but I'm going to give you a penalty anyway because I am somehow offended that you are just as talented as someone else that I've classified as a doctor'.)

Do you plan to start giving people situational modifiers based on their Firearms skill? (Well, yes, you would have a six die pool but see only 2 of those dots come from Firearms, so I'm going to give you a penalty).

More than that, do you plan on letting me play a Doctor with 1 Int and 3 Medicine? After all, the fluff says I'm a doctor and according to you that's all that matters, right?

@Derp said in RL Anger:

@Ghost said in RL Anger:

...when the person in front of you in line at the coffee house orders 9 different drinks during morning rush.

That person is almost assuredly an intern or a secretary.

Which means they are possibly already in Hell.

@thatguythere Sure, both guns work the same, but the guy with only 1 dot in Firearms doesn't know how to lead his target. He doesn't know how to adjust for range or windage or recoil (at least according to your logic).

Your guy with Drive-1 doesn't understand about loading the wheels. He doesn't know about skidpad performance of different vehicles or the difference in performance between front-wheel and rear-wheel drives. Guess we better give him a penalty as well.

I can continue this argument to every single skill if you would like.

Good lord, even if you lack a skill you can attempt an action and as long as you have enough dice with the untrained penalty that you might succeed your allowed to roll (e.g. if I have Dexterity-5 and Firearms-0 and I want to shoot at something where I have a -3 die penalty I get to do it. You're not suppose to turn around and say 'no, you lack the proper Firearms knowledge to account for all the difficulties of the shot and automatically miss' (you can make me futz around with having to find the safety if that gives you a feeling of power before I that the shot, but you're not suppose to make me automatically miss) and you sure as snot aren't suppose to turn around and say 'yes, your pool is 6 dice and there is no penalty but I'm just not going to let you'.

Oh. Sorry Alex, even though you can perform absolutely as well Barry I'm not going to let you do it because you're Int-5 Medicine-1 and he's Int-3 Medicine-3. Yes, I realize your pool is actually two points higher than Carl since he's Int-1 and Medicine-3 and I'm letting him do it, but suck it up.

@Wretched said in Health and Wealth and GrownUp Stuff:

@Auspice

@faraday said in Skills and Fluff in WoD:

@the-sands said in Skills and Fluff in WoD:

I would dearly love for someone on the 'it's a rule' side to explain where I am mistaken

OK, new day. Let me try one last time, a different way...

It seriously depends on your definition of "rule", which is why I'm with @ixokai in thinking that the argument is a bit of semantic pedantry. So I'm going to answer the question in a slightly different way.

I think that the Player's Guide (any rulebook, really) contains different kinds of information:

1. Vital mechanics that are at the core of the system. (e.g. mechanics for conflict resolution as stat + skill + modifiers, how chargen works, etc.)
2. Detailed statistics and descriptions that are important to gameplay but easily altered by the GM without fundamentally changing the game. (e.g. the attribute list and what it means, XP costs, weapon stats, what you can do with skills/powers, etc.)
3. Clarifying examples that are intended to be accurate but not complete/exhaustive. (e.g. sample characters, pie-in-the-sky clan descriptions, etc.)
4. Fluff text that really has no impact on the game but is fun and helps you understand the world better. (e.g. fiction)

If your question is whether the oWoD skill descriptions are category 1, then no - I don't think they are.

I place them somewhere between 2-3. I don't think they're just category 4 "fluff text" and here's why...

If Bob makes up his character assuming that Drive means "stunt driving" and I make up my character assuming that Drive means exactly what it says in the skill descriptions, then our characters are not on a level playing field.

Ok. I'm going to agree with you here completely. I am not being specific enough on what I mean when I say 'skill description'. If the skill description says 'this is what you need to operate a vehicle' (and it continues to be supported throughout the text) then you're right. anyone who wants to operate a car should have to buy it.

We get into a whole messy situation, however, when we consider the rest of the text because under 'Possessed by' the list is 'Cabbies, Truckers, Race Car Drivers, Automotive Show Hosts, Rebels' and if it really means 'anyone who can operate a car' that list should probably include 'most people in a modern society'.

I would like to leave that portion behind, however, because it is really not what I'm talking about. What I'm referring to is the '1 dot, 2 dot' section. Yes. I can definitely see your point about the earlier portion and we can go back and forth and ultimately it is so badly written that probably most oWoD games should include something somewhere to clarify which of these bits of text take precedence. Is it the earlier line that makes it sound like everyone needs to take it or is it the list of examples that suggests only people who spend quite a lot of time behind the wheel who should buy it?

Same thing if Bob makes up his character assuming that Medicine-1 means First Aid and I make up my character assuming that Medicine-1 means "medical/nursing student". This can have impacts down the line if we try to use said skills and are told by the GM "No, you can't splint that broken bone / drive that stick-shift because you lack the requisite skill". It also effectively gives Bob more points for “useful” skills since I spent some unnecessarily to get basic driving and first aid.

But now doesn't that open up the counter argument that Bob was expecting '6 dice means 6 dice' and is told 'no, even though you have the same pool you can't do that'? There's nothing anywhere in the rules that suggest to Bob that he could suddenly be penalized simply because his Skill is only 1 die. Bob's expectation is that he will always be able to roll 6 dice (adjusted by situational modifiers, of course) and suddenly he's not getting to.

I think that's a Bad Thing.

That doesn't mean that Bob is a Cheating McCheater because he "didn't follow the rules". But it does mean that skill descriptions are important and games should clarify what they intend the skills to mean if they're not going to follow the pre-written skill descriptions in the Player's Guide.

And I absolutely agree. They shouldn't write things badly. However, in this instance we are focusing on a specific game where they have. All we can do now is say 'just how should we handle all these conflicting things?'

One really big danger I see is that if your argument is 'no, you have to have Medicine-3 to attempt this' then shouldn't we forbid people from buying Medicine-3 unless they have earned their Master's degree, done 4 years of med school, and 3 years of residency (the requirements to be a GP)? After all, they aren't a GP so they are purchasing a skill their character 'can't' have by the dot-definition. Doesn't that mean they are cheating? If I expected that only characters with medical degrees could purchase Medicine-3 then doesn't that give you 'an advantage over me' because I'm following a more literal interpretation?

@Wretched said in Dead Celebrities 2019:

When that many people can all get together and agree on something....

it's probably wrong.

@ixokai Actually, not so much. When I was working on the TinyMUX code I was doing it with a MySQL connection because I didn't see a particularly good way to handle the massive amounts of data involved just using multiple objects. This is because each character can have an indeterminate number of forks, each fork can have an indeterminate number of morphs, and those morphs are all based off of base classes but with customization since each morph usually can choose a certain number of attributes that get a +5 bonus and may have modifications to their base augments (not just additional augments but modifications since a morph might get rid of a standard augment so it can add an augment that would be incompatible with the old augment).

Working out that schema has actually been one of the biggest issues (and there's a bunch of stuff I haven't mentioned yet like the fact that skills and traits have to be recorded two different ways during CG so that you can recognize the bonuses given by your faction/background when calculating how many CP have been spent) but I'm able to move it verbatim over to Evennia (I was so tempted to store just a few attributes on the character object when I was working in TinyMUX but now I am immensely grateful I resisted). Additionally I've already worked out the majority of my SQL calls for checking/setting stats and while I now need to slot those into Python calls instead of the mux softcode they were residing in before they likewise represent a pretty substantial investment in time that is largely recovered.

That isn't to say there isn't a 'step back' component. Certainly I have to take those SQL calls and move them from the softcode into the new Python code as I said, but this is far from 'go back and start over'.

@Wretched It's a very uneven article.

From what I've read in the past it has its core facts correct (Arneson created D&D on top of the rules for Chainmail by Gygax and Perren, they had a falling out after about a year, Gygax was difficult to work with) but there are secondary facts that seem wrong (which makes me believe that the majority of the 'research' for the article was interviewing Kuntz). Some of his conclusions seem badly supported and even biased (for a lot of the article he seems to be trying to say that Gygax shouldn't be given any credit whatsoever for D&D, yet he basically writes that it took Gygax to make "a publishable game system" with the emphasis from the author).

The author might have given some thought about his source as his source claims to be "the first 'dungeon master' " even though Arneson ran the first games.

For all the 'knocking' of the article I might be doing I think it does do a good job with the core facts at a basic level. It's just that, like I said, I think there's a big problem with bias (possibly from Kuntz skewing the author's view) so take some of its conclusions with a grain of salt.

And if you find the article interesting you might want to look for Of Dice and Men: The Story of Dungeons & Dragons and The People Who Play It. I read it a couple of years ago.

@betternow Actually, that's part of the reason for coding up Eclipse Phase. EP draws very heavily from Altered Carbon and it would only take a mild amount of altering data (stacks are more fragile than they are in EP, backups are more expensive, the vast majority of morphs are flats and splicers, etc.) and you could run a world nearly identical to Altered Carbon.

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

It was my new boss. The one who goes on about how the government is evil and oppressing citizens, except that lovely Trump guy who is fixing America.

You mean the guy who is surrounded by staffers wearing masks (anyone not at their desk other than Mike Pence and Donald Trump are required to wear masks) despite the fact that said staffers are tested once per day?

I mean, if this was all a hoax that would mean his hero and idol was either being fooled as well or else didn't have the balls to exert his presidential authority and say 'we're not putting up with this nonsense'.

So which is it? Is your hero stupid, gutless, or are you (your boss) wrong? Doesn't seem like there's a whole lot of other options.

@Ghost Yeah. I realized after @Sunny's post that I just misunderstood what you were saying.

@Lotherio Stargirl is being broadcast on CW as well.

@Brunocerous said in Carnival Row:

@Runescryer I just started watching the show a few days ago. I'm only three episodes in.

That said, I think it's a fantastic setting. I would recommend that you continue to think along the lines of what you are already considering with factions, and doing something along the lines of what @skew did with Chontio and establishing some orgs that PCs can join from the get-go. Some examples/ideas:

• A fae group that investigates crimes that the police won't
• An org that helps Fae refugees escape to the Burgue
• A lobbying org that works behind the scenes to curry political favor with humans
• A team that seeks to rescue artifacts and lore from Tir-Na-Noc before the Pact can discover or destroy them
• An org that helps arriving Fae refugees get settled in the Burgue

Also, if you are still looking for a game system, you might take a peek at Victoriana. The setting is very close and it might be adaptable.

I think one of the things I like about the setting is that it looks like it offers a lot of possibilities. Yes, I know that there is a very real danger of a lot of it degenerating to activities in and around the brothel but the possibilities for more still exist.

I know that a lot of people are of the opinion that when you step into a new game there should be stuff to clearly aim new characters toward a goal, but for me what I want are possibilities. If I want a story where someone decides the path the characters are going to go down then I'll read a book. The whole reason I'm on a MU* is so I can create and explore, not do what someone else tells me to.

@Arkandel Crossing my fingers on that. I keep telling myself I'm not a Marvel fanboy and that I -want- the DC movies to be good. Unfortunately Suicide Squad has been the only one where I thought the previews looked good (before WonderWoman's) and it was only barely watchable.

I do like the WW previews however. I just hope it lives up to them.

@faraday said in FS3:

Millenium's End was actually the most realistic RPG combat system I've seen. You missed an awful lot, but one shot had a good chance of taking you out. They had rules for bleeding and critical hits and all sorts of other realistic wound stuff. Hit location was a nifty silhouette system that varied the hitloc based on the position of your target. It was a work of art.

My tabletop buddies played it twice, declared: "This system is no fun at all." and never looked back I can't say they were wrong.

Someone mentioned CORPS earlier. The company that created CORPS had a system before that was never really named but which was used by games such Spacetime that pretty much broke me out of my own desire to find more and more realistic game systems and our situation was pretty much the same. We never really played it. Instead we spent time making up a couple of characters and ran a couple of mock combats before realizing that the system, while highly realistic, was very slow, resulted in combat that didn't feel very fun because the odds to hit someone substantially seemed pretty low, but then once a character was solidly hit they went down like a sack of potatoes and were out of action for weeks.

Incidentally the company's name is Blacksburg Tactical Research Center and they are one of those groups who got their hands on data from state and local agencies and who were really committed to trying to make combat work as realistically as possible.

@ArmedCarp said in State of Things:

@Three-Eyed-Crow Hold up... there are Indians, honest to God ones from India, living on Indian reservations in America, like Native Americans?

No (well, maybe a few but not enough to be statistically significant in any sense) but what happens is that that image occurs in both locations.