Best posts made by Thenomain

As much as I like Apocalypse World (and its many spin-offs like Dungeon World), it is still a Game About Stats. It is one of the most focused Games About Stats that I have seen in a long time; it doesn't matter what the other person's skill is, if you succeed lives on your stats alone. This keeps the game rules part more understandable and accessible. Mind you, all the AW games are pretty damn dark.

One of the best Games About Not Having Stats is Polaris, but it's only for three players. Its system is really nice in that only certain people are allowed to tell certain aspect in the story.

If you like that idea, then Microscope may be your game, as a structured world-building exercise. It's the game I want to play to set up a Mu*'s background.

I like character generation in Fate Core, you're tricked into playing an RPG system because it looks like a cooperative story-writing exercise, but after that it becomes a Game About Stats.

The classic and venerated Prime Time Adventures is another game that tricks you into playing an RPG and can be presented as pretty much a party game. I feel that it can be simplified even more than the manual. It's been Kickstarted for an update, and I hope that comes out soon.

I'll echo RDC's Don't Rest Your Head as being a stats-light game, but it's also very damn dark, and it has a lot of (die) resource management to it. It has a very board-game feel to it.

@faraday

Unless it's fun, in which case code the shit out of it. You're allowed to code for you. After all, this is a hobby.

@faraday

I would lock page to an unused flag (since you can't lock it to just any flag), then lock that flag to Wizard-only, then have the flag set/unset based on location.

I have a working prototype for this exact thing for people who are frozen, having to do with @tel and @link more than anything else. Can be done.

@VulgarKitten said in Christmas...:

... because tis the season! What's the best geeky/game-related present you've ever received?

It wasn't to me, but one year my brother got Dark Tower. We played that thing until the motor started giving out.

So you know what would be kind of nice? Having a web-based interface for Anomaly Jobs. Which is to say, having a replacement for Anomaly Jobs. Which is to say, I'm looking for input.

No promises, mind you.

A bit of software like this has some very important limitations. The first is that is local. Not just local to the machine, but possibly local to an account. Not everyone has the ability to get root-level access to the hosting machine.

The second is that it uses or can use mySQL as a back end. This is a limitation imposed by TinyMUX and TinyMUSH, so from the lowest common denominator this limitation comes. This is so I can build an on-game back end for traditionalists like me.

The third is that it NOT be using PHP. This one is mostly in respect to @Chime whom, while I know does not officially allow new games on her servers, wants to wean the security risk entirely from her sight.

And the last is that whatever else it can or cannot do, it must be accessible to Mushers, not an overwhelming system, or a system that can be made into a fairly simple interface. "Fairly Simple" being an interesting term for something like Anomaly Jobs which can be really effing complex, so maybe around the aJobs level of complexity.

Thoughts, comments, input please. Thanks.

@Ganymede

@Catsmeow said in RL Anger:

You mean we aren't supposed to run to other people and have them fight 'our battles' [...]?

Humans are social creatures that create communities as long as that community protects "us". Humanity is wired to fear "them" for basic racial protection. Armed with this, religion, racism, nationalism, and as an extension jingoism make all the sense in the world. A community is much stronger than an individual, and much more likely to enforce their ("our") view.

So yes, we are absolutely supposed to run to other people and have them fight "our" battles, because we are stronger together against those who are wrong which is, of course, everyone else.

...

I am, of course, being a little sardonic. Though I see the power of communities for protection, moral guidance, and so forth, I also think that I'm sick of people not being able to be reasonable directly to one another, and after having the PC movement hammered into our brains and now that we are abandoning PC with the glee of stripping off our crazy-jackets and running naked into the world...

...er, I forgot where I was going with that. Oh, if we're going to abandon socially enforced niceties, then we are in the perfect place to engage in more personal interactions, a more one-on-one personal society.

Too much 'nog man. You know that's not how MU* communicate.

Not enough 'nog; I am clearly still an optimist.

@ThatOneDude said in Web-Based Ticketing Software:

@Thenomain Why don't you just switch to Evennia and be done with it already?

It does so much of what you all want already, or I should say it has the ability to do so much of what you guys want easily.

@WTFE has part of it. The other part is that I know Mux, forwards and backwards. I know the SQL standard well enough. What I don't know is a web-side scripting language other than PHP, and not using PHP is one of my prereqs.

I've been thinking about asking @Volund to stand in as a mentor figure, but I don't yet have the time or brainpower for delving in that deeply.

There is one other thing that WTFE hit upon, and it's pretty important to me: Evennia isn't a Mushlike. It's a Mudlike. It's a backend-coded system that doesn't invite casual coders. It cannot be easily taught in the same way that it can't be easily learned. It would be far preferable to me to get started in that direction and help the WoD games I seem to be coding for head off in that direction, but without that step I'm unwilling to throw all my eggs in that basket.

@faraday, you're right, but I can still easier scrape to Mux than I can to, say Anything on Rails. There are many better coders out there, but if I'm going to be the man on the spot then it has to go the way that I can manage. There's also the consideration of hosting clients, lowest common denominators, and so forth, tho I'll be the first to admit that this isn't the first reason for the backwards way I'm trying to make this work. No, the first reason is, sadly, what I can do.

TinyMUCK has these elements built-in, and even MOO is easier to code in-game, but here I am looking for the solution I can manage.

@RizBunz

What, technical issues with a Vault? You don't say.

(Also, I seem to be caught in a Vault Tec time-loop experiment. Help!)

@Ganymede said in RL Anger:

@Thenomain said in RL Anger:

Not enough 'nog; I am clearly still an optimist.

If you can drink 'nog, you can swallow. So, on your knees, boy.

Not until I have a clear notion of your RL gender politics.

Also, dinner.

The very first TinyMUSH I coded for was an ElfQuest game, where about a third of the characters were feature (we called them "book") characters. I got tired of it because there is no consistency when you have player turnover.

I understand the desire to play your favorite character, Tumpty-Tum Doodles, but as a player of the game the inconsistency is not something I would go for.

If FCs won't be taken off the table, all is good and ignore the comment.

@Ghost said in NPC Roster:

Could also add something like "Pop Culture Society" that covers everything vague from the local band scene to street art to LGBTQ+ scene.

Wait. Are you suggesting that the Rainbow Flag scene is “pop culture”?

And they’re all into Banksy?

I know it’s hard to categorize many things but I think grouping these things together isn’t wise. Hell, the idea of “3 dots in Status: LGBTQ+” even by proxy should probably be “nope”ed.

I know they were off the cuff examples, I just wanted to shoot it in the bud before it went anywhere.

But to add something instead of just removing from ideas, if the area’s politics or composition did mean that “LBGEtc.” would make up a community group, perhaps around the Stonewall era, then go for it. Portland might have a “Performance Art” Status, Miami might have a “Bringing Back Neon 80s For Some Reason” Status.

You know, Pop Culture.

The sexuality revolution going on right now just...isn’t Pop Culture.

@Coin said in RL Anger:

@Faceless said in RL Anger:

@Coin, good point. Stubborn as something that is very stubborn. A donkey or something, probably.

Stubborn as @Coin and @Faceless' hypothetical lovechild.

A coin with no "heads".

@Lithium said in Alternate CoD/WoD Character Growth / XP Systems:

If someone put in the time and the dedication they should have more opportunities to advance and be a more developed character than a brand new character fresh off the boat. That makes sense, because otherwise the Dinosaur would have no character development/growth at least in a system that /has/ such.

Yeah, well, here's the problem: Development is not Advancement. Someone a few posts above called it "mechanical advancement" and that is the single best descriptor of XP I have ever heard.

@Faraday kind of touched on it when invoking the Bartle Archetypes. (Tho the Bartle Archetypes have a lot of issues, they're an excellent place to start.) What do you want out of your game-play?

One of the things that WoW did was make sure that players of similar levels were with other players and challenges of similar levels.

One of the things that City of Heroes did was find a way to scale level without cheating mechanical advancement.

What both of them did was give level-independent systems of socialization and control over their world. We call these: Guilds. (Base Raiding in CoX looked like the beginnings of something awesome, but I never participated.)

Let me tell this as a story in a different game system, again back to D&D. Even as far back as 2nd Ed, people complained that because all Fighters got the same abilities at the same levels they were boring. I never once ever had this problem. My Fighter was a young and rather ignorant lad from a rich merchant family who was excited at becoming an Adventurer(tm), who really wanted to be a Ranger but the nearby elves kind of wanted to avoid the kid because, nnnyeaaaahhh, too much. This is what I did between rolling dice, and informed all my character decisions. As he grew in level, he also grew in fame and therefore brought his family name to more parts of the nearby world, and so he was a boon to his merchant family. He was pretty much trapped to marrying a young woman around his age from a minor merchant family but a little nobility, and tho he thought True Love was a thing he learned that they both respected one another, which is a kind of love, and he was okay with that.

None of this could be represented by stats in D&D, and certainly not in WoD. It had to be played out. Not one single point of XP would allow for this character development.

I tell this because it's a story I enjoy and wish some day to re-create somewhere, but mostly to focus everyone's attention on what Faraday said:

What are you trying to model with XP? Who are you trying to motivate and why?

XP is an OOC conceit to allow for bigger and badassier challenges. How you decide to model that depends on what she said right here.

@Highfalutin

The first one is absolutely for CoD (2e).

I'm not entirely sure how deeply @skew converted it over to V5. I knew he was doing an Rhost conversion but didn't know it was for V5. Let's see if we can get more info....

Update

Skew says it was intended to be Vampire 5e for Rhost, but he never got that far. He fell into a pit called Ares and is enjoying all the unicorns and sex that it brings, or something.

(He also says that it does bring my CoD code to Rhost, so the foundation is there if you want to V5 it up on Rhost. It's not unsensible to do so but I have fixed quite a few bugs and brought some necessary changes to the system, so y'never know.)

@Ganymede said in RL things I love:

@Arkandel said in RL things I love:

They're still a fast food chain, you're eating a fast food burger, yet it's priced as a restaurant one.

Not in Ohio, they aren't

What? Five Guys here in Columbus are bland burgers at an insane price. It's like they want to be In & Out Burger but can't manage being as good, varied, or well-priced.

Their fries are good, tho.

If I want a good fast-food burger around here, I end up at Johnny Rocket's. Sure it's not a fast-food place, but it's still a good burger.

The very first decision I heard about running things was how Evil Owls and Angels and Loonies will all get all up in each other's business, assuring that all plot can potentially drag through multiple spheres. No one group will be treated lightly by another sphere's big-bad.

That is, Strix may screw up something the God-Machine is doing and cause some collateral effects that gain the attention of PCs. Maybe even Werewolf PCs.

This was when I went from installing chargen to coding everything.

@saturna said in What Types of Games Would People Like To See?:

Changeling. CHANGELING. Changeling. Changeling.

I would LOVE a game with changeling. A solo changeling game, or just CtL offered in any of the current WoD games, I don't really care. Changeling is my jam, though.

http://fatesharvest.com/w/Main_Page

I'm just going to leave this right here.

@Ganymede said in RL things I love:

@Thenomain said in RL things I love:

What? Five Guys here in Columbus are bland burgers at an insane price. It's like they want to be In & Out Burger but can't manage being as good, varied, or well-priced.

Over here in Dayton, the burgers are under $5. How this qualifies as being as expensive as a restaurant is beyond me.

If they were more tasty than a bit of wet cardboard, I would be okay with $5. Here they have the taste of tofu being made into a burger, like the only thing it was meant to do is carry the flavor of whatever else you heap on it. To me, what you put on a burger is meant to accent the burger or to complete it.

MOD VOICE

I have locked this thread in waiting to see what @EmmahSue and @Glitch want to do at this point. I suspect it's going to be nothing more than moving the Hog Pit posts to the Hog Pit. There was a warning, we're carrying through.