Best posts made by Thenomain

@arkandel said in Do we need staff?:

One final request: Let's not romanticize the past. Yes, I'm sure we've all been in that special, unique moment in time where that one game achieved nirvana and barely needed staff at all. That's great - but how can that feat be replicated? How can we make it happen again? What lessons, mechanics, in-game functions can we reuse with a different crowd of people but expect similar results?

This seems to be the actual question of the post.

You will need:

• The creators and players to agree on setting and theme
• The creators and players to want it to succeed
• The players to accept the creator's ideas of success
• (if the creator's idea of success it to let players define their own success, this counts)
• The creators to enable the players who are helping their idea of success
• The players to enable the creators to engage with them more

Most of this has already been said by @Ganymede , as she and I have been going over this on these boards for over a decade now we are almost in confluence about these questions.

You can't easily create a good player base. You can try. There are things that you can do in order to get one, mainly:

• Build passion in the project

And that's how you do it. Simple.

Why haven't people been crowing about Divinity more? I've been playing this with @EmmahSue and the level of consideration and interaction of bits of plot and environment is amazing, and chasing one plot can get anyone involved in five others.

I can't wait to start Divinity 2 with friends.

@arkandel said in Do we need staff?:

@thenomain said in Do we need staff?:

Do games need staff? Yes.

Do they need a lot of staff? Up to them.

They need the right staff.

True, but there's no way to systematize right.

Nor should there be. "Let's systemize a social system" is a good way to fail at social systems.

@Auspice said in General Video Game Thread:

@Thenomain said in General Video Game Thread:

Why haven't people been crowing about Divinity more? I've been playing this with @EmmahSue and the level of consideration and interaction of bits of plot and environment is amazing, and chasing one plot can get anyone involved in five others.

I can't wait to start Divinity 2 with friends.

Because it's almost never on sale?

But when it is, it's the best isometric CRPG I've played since Planescape:Torment. No joke.

If you’re using my stat system, I came up with a way to add bloodlines to it.

Originally for Descent, available to all:

https://github.com/thenomain/GMCCG/blob/master/Z - Game Lines/Vampire the Requiem/VtRz - The Descent - Bloodlines.txt

@Admiral said in General Video Game Thread:

@Testament Kojima is the Wes Anderson of video games.

...that is not a compliment. Wes Anderson is terrible.

If Kojima is wrong, I don't wanna be right.

@ganymede said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

How interested would you be in a World of Darkness games that eliminated the use of social stats on other PCs entirely?

AKA Almost Every WoD Player? Wouldn't miss it.

I did get rolled-at once by someone I just met to force my character to be in awe of them, so I followed through to be nice and mentally put them on my "would rather avoid" checklist.

It wasn't until later that day that I learned it was Spider.

Did You Know:

Obduction, from Cyan—you know, the farmer guys who made Myst?—is free on Good Ol' Games.

You'd think this would be good for their "Firmament" Kickstarter.

But you can still give Cyan money for Firmament, so I'm going to note that too. Because Cyan.

And now you know.

@tragedyjones said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

Only if you take away the ability of people to use physical stats on other PCs as well.

Except the understanding and expectations of what physical stats do to other characters is very well-detailed.

The understanding and expectations of what social or mental stats do to other characters is not.

Unless you're using literally any incarnation of Fate.

Obviously this means that everyone should be using Fate.

There are some other RPGs where the stakes and rules for social combat are clear. If you want to use social stats with characters as a valid target, use one of them.

--

Mind you, I've been stating this since nWoD came out (2004, jesus): The book already instructs players how to negotiate these skills, they just don't want to.

With almost every game's combat system, there is no response other than to engage the scripted combat system. But with no scripted social system, you have to rely on the target to be reasonable, and Prisoner's Dilemma takes full effect; it only works if both of you are willing to negotiate loss. No matter how many examples are given for how to negotiate, people will tend to...simply not.

So in situations where PCs may be playing adversarial roles to other PCs, either burn the stats with fire, or put them on completely equal footing with the physical stats.

@Ghost said in General Video Game Thread:

@Arkandel Fallout 4 is every other 1st person Fallout

You are in-sane. FO4 has nothing on FO:NV, and I don’t think it’s story is as good as (fixed) FO3.

FO4 is a railroad adventure in an open world. Or: See the Zero Punctuation review on it.

The base building is fun for that kind of thing, tho.

@ganymede

This Makes Me Think Of:

There are different types of LARPs. Some of them you rely on the dexterity of the player as the character, in others the combat is done via cards.

Because we MUSHers are essentially writers using a loose system to fill in the rest, then starting with a system where "making an impassioned speech" is rolled and not role-played will be...a challenge. How do you tickle the writer and role-player when you say, "You can do this, but you need to roll your success and write accordingly"?

Your example is why some people want open sheets. "I give the St. Crispin's Day Speech!" / (looks at your sheet, yells out from the crowd) "BO-RING!"

I think there are better ways, but accountability in stats is as old a discussion as the WoD Mu*.

@Tempest said in General Video Game Thread:

or Aeris isn't going to die, or something.

Um, spoilers!

@ganymede said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

But let's suppose that to be true. All the more reason to abolish social and mental combat, and simply rely on our wits and writing, as players, to convince others to do what we want.

Then why not physical combat?

This is not a trick question: If we can rely on playing the character sheets with each other, why allow one player character to be physically antagonistic to another?

@Too-Old-For-This said in General Video Game Thread:

@Thenomain I can't get into it because its not Chrono Cross.

Fuck, which one was I talking about?

...

Okay, everything I just said about not pausing? Apply that to Chrono Trigger.

I want to pause this game so bad.

@ganymede

Getting away from a system with a binary succeed/fail system would also help.

So is it me, or does Steam feel like it's kind of trying to ignore this year's Steam Sale because of it's many little problems--the confusion that lead to de-wishlisting a bunch of stuff, the Corgi Runaway Winners (though I joined it before I knew because, y'know, corgis!)

Question:

I want to play someone who owns a business that is known for taking over and reselling other businesses for a profit.

A different character owns a business.

I want to take it apart.

This is very clearly a PvP action that relies on mental and/or social skills.

Should it be allowed?

@Sparks said in Fringe/Weird RPGs:

Donjon.

I think this is one of the games that sent ripples throughout the entire industry. You can see Wick and Hicks playing with ideas here for almost a decade. You can see some of the core ideals here very solidly in Apocalypse World. None of this should be a surprise as they all participated in the same community.

I once lost access to the Donjon site because it wasn't maintained or kept up and was glad to grab a PDF version of it the second it resurfaced.

Really, if anyone wants to see what Cowboys & Indians style play looks like with some minimal rules, you could do a lot worse with your time (like continuing to read this thread) than to read Donjon.

If you can find it.

I couldn't.

@ganymede said in Social Stats in the World of Darkness:

Would you make social stats in the World of Darkness more powerful? If so, how?

Give them the teeth of physical stats, either by backing them up with concrete results (which Doors tries to do) or by bringing th consequences of physical actions into stark relief.

Since most people play RPGs to be Awesome, I prefer the Teeth result, unless you want to play in a universe of some considerable shadiness, a World of Darkness if you will, then more of the latter.

That said, here are some things I used to play, want to play, or imagined that maybe I played:

• Fringeworthy: A game about infinite dimensions. Really, anything by TriTac Games is pretty fringe...er...worthy.
• TFOS/Toon/Tales from the Flying Vagabond/Bureau 13: All the "Rootbeer & Pretzels" games. I would mention Paranoia but I mean, c'mon, who hasn't played Paranoia, friend Citizen?
• Car Wars GURPS: Yes, they GURPsed this setting up and I loved it. Not GURPs, oh no, but the setting. I had all the setting books.
• Space 1989: I don't know if this is "fringe" per se, but if we can add TFOS and Toon, I'm adding this one.

Fringe games that probably aren't really fringe:

• Apocalypse World: How many games has this bred?
• Numenera/The Strange: This one has oddly spawned the delightful kid's game, "No Thank You, Evil!" Also a moderately okay computer game.
• City of Mist: Probably about as fringe as Fantasy Warhammer Role-Play. This thing is a hella complex treatment of the Apoc. World Engine.

Let's talk modern-day fringe:

• Summerland
• Songbirds
• Broken Worlds: The "Kill Six Billion Demons" RPG
• Cryptomancer
• Spire: Oh my god, read Spire; this needs to be less fringe
• Anything by Emily Care Boss
• Anything by Vincent Baker, come to mention it.

I could mention a half dozen more that aren't even 20 pages, but I have to draw the line somewhere. (Emily and Vincent are just so good that they can break this rule whenever they want.)

And this is just what's on my iPad.

I haven't played anything post-D&D 2e or WoD 2nd Ed, but that's not to say I don't want to. I would play any game I've mentioned, with glee.