Best posts made by Thenomain

@Sunny
I think we can safely use Wikipedia for this, because there's probably no solid answer to it. So might as well go for a rough approximation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaplot

"The metaplot is the overarching storyline that binds together events in the official continuity of a published role-playing game campaign setting. Major official story events that change the world, or simply move important non-player characters from one place to another, are part of the metaplot for a game."

Huh.

The most important thing I notice here is that the definition is exclusive to RPGs. My computer's online-dictionary-lookup service (er, might as well be Google) has no other answer for it. This puts us in the interesting situation where it is anything we want.

This is going to be interesting.

I'm going to stick (loosely, like a cat to the curtains) to my earlier statement that metaplot is what drives the world, or that corner of the world, or what drives the direction of the plots. A metaplot itself is not a plot, and touching it directly would be like walking to the horizon. You can get there, but it takes dedication and when you get there you've discovered something else.

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

Which means they only care because it's butting in on the realm of dudebro, aka superhero films.

And here's where it hurts people. "You can't like the thing I like." Really, Reactionary Hipster Movement? ('Hipster' can be removed, but I left it in for mild laughs.) One of the best things that happened to computer games was Halo, allowing in a bunch of non-gamers into gaming culture. Now look at Steam. Look at it.

They've also said hey, if you want to do a men's only event, here's our private event page. Plan one. Have at.

All prejudices fade in the presence of the green.

@Sunny

yearly spend cap

For the sake of St. Gygax, why? If you don't want people to spend XP, don't give it to them. Why complicate things by throttling both ends?

The only spend throttles I remotely agree with are increasing costs for linear gains (how WoD used to do it) and spend timers to space out the spending, and I can be on the fence about both sometimes.

So what in Planescape is this meant to accomplish?

@Jim-Nanban said in RL Anger:

stop ruining this for the rest of us!!!!!

I'm going to make this my new position on all social issues.

@Sunny said:

Once I have everything organized and presentable I'll toss it up on the forum for you to look at.

Well my comment wasn't entirely for you. I don't disagree that finding something else for people to wibble their XP on is an interesting goal, it's just not WoD's goal. It's Fate Core's goal. It's D&D 3/3.5's goal. (Spending XP for magic items.) I'm sure there are other games in which you can spend your XP more on than character advancement.

So let's go ahead and make it WoD's goal. Why not; bringing in elements from other games to potentially solve a problem is a good thing. Think outside the box.

This doesn't answer the question: Why a spend limit? I can't think of a single RPG that has both XP as a limiter at both ends of the stat. Curtail, guide, discourage, but never cutting you off from your own character sheet.

I'm not asking you to defend the choice (maybe explain it), but there's enough chatter that the idea is good and ... no, no it's not.

@HelloProject said in RL Anger:

@Thenomain

Being like "I don't give a shit about other people's kids" is half the reason that anti-vaxxer shit is a thing, so it's hard to sympathize with it.

sigh

@Thenomain said in RL Anger:

It's not hard to understand, no matter what you say, even if it's stupid for the stage of evolution we need to be in.

Emphasis mine. You were demeaning Jim with how things can/can't be understood. I found that to be a particularly nearsighted way of looking at it. If you can understand why something is stupid, you can be better arguing against it, even when the parent gets into the knee-jerk yelling of "I Am A Parent How Dare You Tell Me How To Raise My Child".

edit: I cannot imagine the stress of being a parent. People who let themselves be flaming assholes (heh, "flaming assholes") should be pitied and, from the truly patient, helped.

--

As far as my "human race" statement, I don't disagree that this is scientifically correct, I'm in particular mocking the way that certain people express the sentiment in certain contexts.

Oh yes, certain people in certain context are certainly idiotic. I love the "Colbert Report" attack of the "I Know a Black Guy, Therefore I'm Not Racist" statement. This in particular still needs openly mocked.

--

In other words, "It's always okay to punch a Nazi" is a perfect example of bringing hate to solve hate. There is a time and a place to bring down the anger.

Incidentally: It's always okay to punch a Nazi.

@Arkandel

For instance I might want to play a professional boxer but have no interest in having scenes around him sparring, working out, having actual fights

Then you shouldn't be playing a boxer.

Let me clarify: Most tabletop systems are about extraordinary people doing extraordinary things. If you are playing a boxer and your contribution to these extraordinary situations has nothing to do with boxing, then yes, I'm going to say you are playing your own character wrong at worst, that you don't get to increase your boxing skill at best.

Most tabletop systems don't award XP for downtime, and it's only the skill-based games I've seen that give GM the power to say "no" to spending. Really, the GM can say "no" to anything, but would be a complete jerk to do so.

Now, I'm talking in tabletop terms because the systems we're talking about were designed for tabletop. The situations that you're talking about are unique to Mu*s, and I generally think that you're smart enough to come up with some ideas that help transition from the tabletop to online. You don't, mind you, so you sound like you're shying at flies or making mountains out of molehills.

This is the preface to the following: WoD gives XP for showing up. You were there. You participated. How you take it from here is going to depend, but I prefer to think that showing up on a Mu* at all is worthy of a cursory thanks. If you want to use that cursory thanks to up skills you never use, then go for it. Call it a part of downtime.

RfK apparently folded the 'participation' part up into what kind of RP you were engaged in. Weighing one over another is smart. Hard to quantify and probably harder to qualify, but I like it. It's akin to a GM saying, 'Well this was a light day, so only 1 xp for everyone.' This is part of the table's rules and a right that's been given to the GM, sometimes explicitly. Without a GM, we need to find other solutions, and this one hits the right notes for what the RPG was going for.

This post has no grand conclusion. I've lost my train of thought, so I'm ending it there.

edit: @Misadventure asked me:

Did you miss that Arkandel was saying he didn't want to play up the practice/training side of being a boxer?

If this was the point, then I missed it like a skull-shaped meteorite misses the Earth, and Arc and I are in agreement.

What I thought was being said was, "I shouldn't have to play a boxer to raise boxing stats." I like my response to that—if you want to raise boxing then you better damn well have boxed somewhere along the line of the character's adventures—even if it's one-hundred percent inappropriate to what was actually said.

@Lisse24 said in Good TV:

Aaaannnnyyyone wanna risk ending up in a ball on the floor and talk Leftovers?

Best leftovers: Pizza

I want a game set somewhere that staff and players can maintain as that location. I don't care where it is, but if I wanted another inconsequential setting, I could play anywhere.

@Auspice said in Date Thenomain:

Dating Theno means going to Ohio.
Why would anyone want to do that?

Highest opioid death toll in America?

Rock & Roll Hall of Fame?

A lake that could once be set on fire?

People could see the elusive Ganymede?

It's not Kentucky?

The only truism about Mu*s is that they must have group participation. How that participation comes out depends on so many elements that I don't think it can be quantified and barely qualified.

What I see most in this discussion is one trying to find fairness. You cannot. I see a little push back that all of a certain action is wrong, which is also untrue.

What you can be is open and honest. I steal this from Ganymede. My take is that you also show some level of human understanding, that this is the closest to fair that anyone will ever get.

And most of us won't even get that close.

This dent on my forehead is from where it hits the desk every time something bad happens in the world and Trump makes it about him.

@Ganymede said:

Autonomy is not complete autonomy. I wasn't suggesting a carte blanche; only the freedom to do what I believe needs to be done.

I understood this point. My point was: What if you believe something needs to be done and your superiors disagree? Either you are foolish for expecting never to be questioned, or they are foolish for telling you that they won't ever get in your way.

Not all managing is micro-managing.

The only real Avatar is the last airbending kind.

@Arkandel said:

No, there aren't enough coders. I've spoken to several people who really want to start a new game and they fail to find someone to set up and code it up for them.

Then we need to find non-coded solutions.

This will be my mantra for 2015.

Figure out what's not needed and strip it from your mental vocabulary. Do you know what we had on the original Masquerade? +sheet, +roll, and that's it.

You yourself were whining about telnet-based game systems, Ark. Find non-telnet solutions. d20Net was mentioned. You've forgotten about Nuku's flash-in-the-pan 4e D&D game that used online spreadsheets as a map system, for god's sake. We have the technology, but not the culture.

Be the change you want to see.

@Coin said in Date Thenomain:

@Thenomain said in Date Thenomain:

@VulgarKitten said in Date Thenomain:

@Thenomain
There's too much bromance there for me to get in between.

My life is over. I regret everything.

So does your mom.

You are off the list. I can't remember who is actually choosing, but please note that @coin is so off the list.

@Sessurea said:

@Cobaltasaurus said:

Nuku does come around every so often to talk about Ponyfinder. He (?) has been fairly successful with it.

Boy was I surprised to discover that's not some kind of Brony dating site.

Maybe it is. Nerds Find Other Nerds Through Kickstarter? I'm now waiting for this news headline.

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

Shit, this goes for Mushers too. I don't mind hanging out with MU*ers, but sometimes, guys, I really don't wanna hear about your character from a decade ago. Really.

Or the latest staff bullshit. It's all sportsball talk at that point; it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things and there are so many more interesting things to talk about.

@ZombieGenesis said:

I think the key to understanding M&M is understanding PL. It is, unfortunately, a min-max issue by default.

Thanks, this was the point I was getting at. The game rules of MM2 touch on this lightly, "Set your PL as high as you can go, then go from there," but going from there is not straightforward.

@DnvnQuinn said:

Min Maxing in a game with combat as a focus is...just smart gaming.

It rankled me when HelloRaptor said things like this. My contention--my very strong and deeply-rooted belief--is that if the game doesn't help you play it, it's a shitty game. If your table doesn't help you overcome the learning curve, they are shitty friends.

MM2 requires you to be good at its brand of min-maxing before you've ever played the game. This is doubly true on Mushes, because the people around you aren't friends, and MM2's chargen system makes WoD Mage's magic system look like kindergarten math.

Anecdotally, my MM2 character attempts end up with maybe two powers, while those around me have six or so and do more damage with a better chance to hit. How? I have no idea, because this form of min-maxing is not in my gamer's DNA. MM2 is, probably quite by accident, antagonistic toward anything but the d20 Feat-Based gamer mentality.

The main, and almost only, reason I point this out is that every time people gush about how awesome M&M is, I want to scratch my eyes out crying tears of blood.

@Meg said in RL Anger:

I have to admit, I get uncomfortable when even other people are gleeful about another person's death. Even a fictional character's death.

I think we are supposed to be allowed to cheer for the death of a fictional character, like at the end of The Terminator, or very often in Game of Thrones, though I understand the sympathy that crosses the fictional/reality divide in our mind, and respect it.