@kk said in RL Anger:

@Thenomain

After we worked it out and let go.

She tagged me and said I attacked her and more than once.

Forums have a mental delay. It's also entirely possible that someone else is wrong, and everyone knows they're wrong, and while I understand and appreciate the desire to tell everyone just how wrong they are (I too get caught in this trap), it's possible to simply remind the audience that the accusations are still wrong, and not add to the argument.

By which I mean: This is what I advise, being someone who needs kicked in the head to not get caught in the same 'no you/no you/no you/no you' trap.

@ganymede said in General Video Game Thread:

@thenomain

The Final Fantasy VI port is much better.

The day I read that you could kill off the protagonist of Chrono Trigger and still complete the game was the day I decided: I Would Play This Game. I might even kill off the protagonist just for fun.

I started FF7 once and kind of got bored before the end of the intro cinematic. Maybe I need to give it an actual chance.

I finished what I'll call the "intro adventure" to CT and yeah, I'm hooked. Hooked in spite of the janky, terrible port.

I'm sure I could find the ROM somewhere, mind. Now that I paid for this crap port I won't feel a moment's guilt.

@Gilette

Yeah, but @Misadventure is a fatalist and a simulationist when it comes to RPGs. (Oh shush, Mis, you know it's true.) What matters is whether or not you have a connection to the character and you feel that character is telling a story. If you are not stopping the end of the world, then who cares? Well, too many people care. Coffee Shop RP is also about planning, connecting, maneuvering, and figuring out what to do next. It matters every bit as much as you want it to matter.

It stops mattering only when all RP stops mattering, which I'll outright say tends to only be when staff stops allowing RP to matter or when players stop allowing their own RP to matter.

I've seen both. Either staff get so tied up in their own approval process that they end up being little more than gatekeepers of fun, or players don't enable themselves to step up and just do things, sometimes random things, sometimes meaningful things.

On the player side, tho, it's as meaningful as you, the player, make it. There is a limit, yes. There's always a limit. But if you're not willing to say to yourself, "I'm going to play the SHIT out of this concept," then you're participating in the second form of Meaning Nothing.

@Ghost

I'm not saying anyone who minds the difference are bad people, but I get a little tired listening to the complaints. Different medium means content must be approached differently. I approach them the way I approach different directors with plays or covers of music. It's going to be different. How did they interpret it?

I can sense a rabbit hole of going about how people who don't like the interpretation are okay people, and they are, but this being the peeve thread and me stressing how minor the peeve is to me, I'm going to prematurely shrug one shoulder and nod.

Warner Brothers Entertainment (by way of the giant banner on the Steam store page):

WB Publisher sale weekend! We've got Batman!

Me:

Okay, what else?

WB:

Batman!

Me:

Yeah, I see that. Three types of Batman. Is that it?

WB:

What do you mean is that it? It's Batman! What else do you want?!

Me:

Look, I just clicked on the banner while you're protesting and you've got all the Legos--

WB:

Including Lego Batman!

Me: (continuing)

--F.E.A.R., Mad Max, and motherfucking Shadow of Mordor/War. Why are you hiding behind The Bat?

WB: (shyly)

B-because Batman. *sniff*

@Caryatid

... aimed at his knee.

Well fuck.

Brus was the best of us. I mean that. We could use more like him, and we lost someone who meant a lot to me for this hobby.

Rest in peace, my good man.

@admiral said in General Video Game Thread:

Fallout 76 is worth buying. That is all. Carry on.

Fallout 4 was barely worth buying. What about 76 puts it above its older clone?

I would love Mage: The Ascension done in Mage: The Awakening (v2), but I think @EmmahSue got burnt out on the idea after so long. I don't really blame her.

@tiredewok

The only thing better than ME2 is ME3’s Citadel DLC, which you must play through ME3 to appreciate, so ME2 still wins for consistency,

ME:A is playable, but it suffers the rushed production cycle. And it suffers a lot of SSDG (same stuff, different galaxy). The implementation is still better than FO4, but even at their worst I think BioWare tells better stories than Bethesda.

(Note: The end of ME3 did not change my opinion that the Mass Effect trilogy was the best series of computer games ever made.)

@Miss-Demeanor

Other people have made the point as well. There was a period where WoD players were particularly pushy about being allowed to do shitty things to other characters, and we did spend a great deal of time trying to find a way to balance IC theme to OOC behavior but here's the thing: We didn't see it that way.

When we started seeing it that way, we cut it out. In the last three to five years, a shitty WoD player is far more recognizable as separate from their shitty WoD character.

Where I'm playing now (Fallen World), there are a lot of questionable characters but they're not being portrayed the stereotypical PvP-oriented WoD player of the days of yore, the issues you're bringing up. We—you, me, others here, people who don't read these boards—have pushed even a modicum of empathy.

You know what other online game group is stereotypically shitty about understanding the other players? MUDders. I have seen almost as much bad behavior out of this game style as I have out of any WoD game.

I'm not saying this to shame any of the reasonable MUD-centric people on these boards, but to point out that confirmation bias is real, and it has kept me away from MUD-likes for decades.

None of this having to do with VR. Just people.

@bobgoblin said in General Video Game Thread:

Whose excited for Diablo Immortal. Eh?

China.

Sorry, let rephrase:

Anyone who was surprised by anything at Blizzcon should be ashamed. I don't even follow Blizzard and actively try to avoid them these days and even I wasn't surprised.

I'm not even surprised at the vitriol from the fans, though they should also be ashamed. Seriously, guys, enough. Oh no, your pretendy fun-time was neither pretendy nor funy-timey enough! NOOOOOOOOO! My heart bleeeeeeeeds!

I am a little surprised at how Blizzard approached this and how they're reacting. You'd think they were a big game company or something and could afford a halfway decent PR department that would've seen all this coming from a mile away and responded with something measured. But no.

Blizzard should've known their audience, a rabid group of fans who spent money to be there in person, and handed them kiddy-toys. Pre-announced, heavily-telegraphed toys, but toys nonetheless. I don't know what they were thinking.

Reaching into my brain for fragments of this conversation here and elsewhere in the past, I think we seem to like:

1. Don't use social stats.
2. Come up with a combat system similar to a location hit system, but social.
3. Let the attacker set the goal, then let the defender negotiate and/or interpret the goal as much like an evil genie as they want to be.

Let's take that one scene from The Crying Game as an example. Sexy woman [attacker] is hitting on a guy at the bar [defender]. Dice are rolled. Defender is successfully seduced. Sexy woman is really a guy. (Oh, spoiler alert: She's a guy.)

If the attacker's goal was 'have sex with this guy at the bar', is the defender now obliged? Let's say the sexy woman is really a sexy woman. Is he still obliged?

And that's not even my biggest concern every time this conversation comes up!

What do we mean by "Social Conflict"? Physical conflict has so many systems in most games that while we think it's purely "punch, bleed, die", outrunning someone is a physical conflict, sport is a physical conflict, stealth is one part physical conflict. Treating interrogation the same as seduction the same as political maneuvering is just not going to cut it. Most of the few RPGs that try to address it at this more generic level don't seem to understand it.

FATE and Fate Core take social conflict as a mental test of wills, which I think is one of the brilliant things about it. Sometimes it has non-personal fallout ("shunned by the secret society"), but as almost all Aspects in Fate Core are negotiated, you are encouraged to be reasonable and to choose what makes sense for the situation.

I understand that Exalted takes a less generic, more detailed approach to social maneuvering.

Apocalypse World goes even more specific with each character class being able to learn how to force results. They still have to succeed, and there's still a risk that can utterly fuck you up (there is always a risk that can utterly fuck you up in AW). It reminds me of the one class skill that characters get in CP and CP2020.

It's all about the PvP, man. That's what I think when I see the "social skills" question related to the Muxen. We sure love to roll dice at each other. I've tried to think of games that have a bit of the PvP baked in; in the case of Fate it's because you can fall pretty dramatically and that's half the fun.

Is that what you were asking about, @Bobotron?

Hold on, let me get out my megaphone....

@jaded said in General Video Game Thread:

Anyone who has been eyeing some of the Tell Tale Games and considering buying them, the company is delisting games for purchase in Steam but remain available if you have purchased them.

So if you want anything you better grab it.

There is so much good shit out there from Telltale. Of course mostly "The Walking Dead" and "The Wolf Among Us". No doubt someone will buy up this catalog for stupid cheap, but in the meantime, here you go.

@Bobotron said in Social Conflict via Stats:

Yeah. I want to give people tools to support their roleplay, and to create fairness in situations, but also to prevent the whole veering left/veering right that comes from raw dice rolls.

There is no such thing as "fair" when suspended in a jar, sitting alone, cut off from the rest of the system. "Fair" is how one thing works with all the stuff around it, and as @Ganymede says, fair is also being clear and open about what's expected.

That is: "Fair" is systems- and expectations-dependent.

since it can't dictate the specific outcome as that requires player collaboration and the loser being a good sport, unlike a raw combat system that dictates you have been wounded/knocked out/whatever.

Sure it can, because the entirety of physical interaction is far, far more than combat. The entirety of social interaction is far, far more than a clash of wills. Look at the core nWoD (pre-Doors-version) rulebook and read the system descriptions for Seduction then read it for Intimidation. They are presented as entirely different systems. There is no reason to try to shoe-horn the two together under one catch-all system any more than there is putting "athletics" under combat, unless that's your goal.

What I'm slowly getting around to is that you seemed to have asked a question with your mind made up about the answer.

*snrk*

@Cupcake said in Coming Soon: Arx, After the Reckoning:

Is there any way at all that paging can be adjusted so that you don't have to type the person's entire name? It makes it especially difficult when you're maintaining multiple conversations and/or are on a phone or tablet. I'm not sure about the reason for it, but it's terribly inconvenient.

Name completion. Even when people don't use it, it's such a polite thing to code. A++.

I would at the very least do a first match on an alpha sort of connected character names.

Cupcake: The reason it isn't default is because it's an extra layer of code.usually not hard, but sometimes it gets in the way in every way conceivable. I won't divert this thread with explanations; PM me if you want to know.

@mietze said in The Board Game Thread:

Super excited to start a family game of Legacy Betrayal

Ohmygodohmygodohmygod! Emmah, her roommate, and I are on Chapter 3 of 13.

Unlike Pandemic Legacy, there doesn't seem to be a way to "lose" the entire Legacy. And remember: @EmmahSue is always a witch.

--

@arkandel said in The Board Game Thread:

I've been thinking about Gloomhaven.

Is it as good as the reviews claim? Is it worth the price tag?

I think I have to accept that I don't care for minis games. Do note that it's possible to play this game for years and not complete it.

It's not as downright depressing as Kingdom Death: Monster, and it's less about playing heavy metal band covers. (Note: You would be the scantily clad women in KD:M, even if you're playing a guy. The world is the giant bad-ass monster. Not you. Never you.)

--

@auspice said in The Board Game Thread:

I really feel Gloomhaven falls into the category of 'you need someone else to teach you' or maybe just watch a lot of videos?

Pandemic Legacy and Betrayal Legacy both have their FAQ: "What if we discover we're playing the game wrong." The answer: "Don't sweat it."

Gloomhaven isn't that complex for rules. Its complexity is in how in the characters play. Each character is wildly unique and has their own advantages, and even then the randomness of the card draw could be the difference between succeeding the scenario by the skin of your teeth vs. failing it frustratingly near the end.

You can re-try any scenario as many times as you want, even after you succeed at it.

--

Things I like about Gloomhaven:

• It's weird.
• The game mechanics are interesting, different, and creative. No dice!
• And unforgiving as hell. The system pushes you to make the smartest moves possible.
• Scenarios can be played fairly blind.
• The monster AI is very straight-forward.
• Your character doesn't get killed, just knocked out of the rest of the scenario.
• Co-op.

Things I don't care for in Gloomhaven:

• Once your character is knocked out you get to sit and socialize.
• Minis movement and combat.
• Can be pretty screwed by your card-hand draw.
• XP earning system--accomplish a secret goal--is extremely random.
• (Thankfully you can lose the scenario and still gain your xp, but there are times where you can either win the scenario or gain xp but probably not both. I had one that was "kill fewer than x creatures.")

Emmah knows people who adore this game. My gaming group owns it but now that I've played a round on TTS I know without sinking money into it that I can take it or leave it.

@Ganymede said in Social Conflict via Stats:

@Arkandel said in Social Conflict via Stats:

But how?

Enforcing them?

Ever feel like we've been on this ride before?

Mind you, I agree with the OP that one way to "enforce them" is to make a system that is enforced by the enlightened self interest of the players. AKA, make game systems to do so.

@Kanye-Qwest : Have you looked at Fate Core? There is a system where cooperation and failing are both incentivized. It's not a system that fits all game types, but it's probably the most well-known of the systems that do.

@prototart said in General Video Game Thread:

@too-old-for-this said in General Video Game Thread:

Because who doesn't love rolling the world into a ball?!

probably communists

Funny you should say that, because the game was designed to be a criticism of consumerism. That’s why he didn’t do a sequel. Kind of defeats the purpose.