Best posts made by Thenomain

@TNP said in Dragon Age: Dread Wolf's Rise:

Seems Anders was separated from Justice and pardoned.

If this isn't all but proof that staff are making a game to play their favorite characters and little other reason, I don't know what is.

Things I Love about Shadowrun:

The history leading up to the first rulebook is a mix of very real and insanely wild fantasy. I'm sure somewhere along the line they wrote who lead the "Ghost Dance" and that they were a powerful mage from the previous era, etc., but without any explanation it read to me as thus:

The world exploded because someone opened up magic and let it in. The people who did so were Native Americans because why not and also some other games around the same time period did it and also also half the creators was really into it. Anyway, because of this the Indians shook down the American government with pretty real threats of destroying a lot of things and so they took a lot of their land back.
Meanwhile, gigantic magical disease warping bodies and pushing bone through skin and teeth, and some babies were being born pretty and pointy-eared. Also dwarves. People freaked, and time marched on.
Also, Cyberpunk. Megacorps. This is our Fantasy Love-Letter to Cyberpunk 2020. We have some ideas but on the whole we think this is a really cool idea and also have you seen this young artist we have? He is a-maz-ing.
Here are some ideas we came up with and some basic systems. Go have fun.

The mood of this can be used to explain how World of Darkness came about, too, but that's not about WoD. It's about me, Thenomain, playing an Elven Decker with a Talis Cat named "Bob". (The cat didn't have a name for himself. The character called him Bob, and that was that.)

Cyberware and Fighting The Man and Pew Pew Fireballs and it was a fantastic stage for a lot of make-believe.

Part of the problem about being into cyberpunk (game, genre, whatnot) is that you're probably inwardly kind of angry and maybe over-thinking the unfairness of the world too much, and then they released Earthdawn and said, "This is what Earth was like before the modern era," and that was the beginning of the end for me because in my silly joy was inserted a seed of seething betrayal. Earthdawn is a fine game, but it's about this time they started inserting super-figures, a la WoD's Baba Yaga, people who control the ebb and flow of the game world and that person is, frankly, not you. Oh they've also been hiding in a world without magic this entire time. Nevermind about the common record, just accept it.

Nnnnnooooope. Magic may have been magic, but it was something that could be studied, something that was codified and taught. Magic was, if you'll all excuse the comment, a science. Then I started investigating the game for its internal consistency and kept losing it. Contained stories were and still are quite refined and interesting, but the budding metaplot pushed me further and further away.

I kept out of all the Shadowrun discussions here because people enjoy it, so why should I ruin it with my bad mood about it? (Sure, I'll do that about WoD, but I'm invested in WoD.) Then the fateful argument about some poor woman who wanted to make a Shadowrun game, and it went entirely off the rails talking about wi-fi. That stuck with me for a long time, because ones investment in what they love is a hot-button issue, because science-fiction (even science-fantasy) changes with culture, and because I started to deconstruct what happened between me and Shadowrun starting with finding out what happens between you and Shadowrun. ("You" the reader.)

What is Shadowrun to me: Fantasy magic overlaid on our world, projected into a semi-dystopian near future.

Science fiction in its form of magic as culture shock.

The alt.something.something.rpgs newsgroup.

@tek said in Dragon Age: Dread Wolf's Rise:

@Thenomain I mean taking an established character and just doing whatever the fuck with it feels lazy to me.

Because that is lazy. It's a shared game world, and a canon character is an established part of that world. As Mis says, most games would never allow yo to do that with the setting. Unless that person is staff, as this has happened before and it looks like it may be happening again.

@Ganymede said in Retail "Horror" Stories:

@Tinuviel said in Retail "Horror" Stories:

Aren't the predators in Target, though?

Nah. Stanford.

One thing about living in Santa Carla I never could stomach; all the damn vampires.

@faraday, are you still using regedit()? That is, can I try to port it to Mux again? I don't think we ever got past that one particular function.

@surreality said in Welcome to Fallen World MUX!:

@Thenomain I getcha. I think that happens on games with multiple alts, too. It is more a factor of the person than the prevalence of games available, though, I think.

But the more characters you're idling on, the more likely you'll hit a scene.

@Chime

So what you're saying is that our tools fail us and we're left with incomplete information and have to fill in the blanks with our chaotic, unknowable human minds.

We just have an incomplete model for both the electron and the human condition.

@lordbelh said:

Those most eager to set those standards tend to be the ones you absolutely least want to.

Rule of Staffing #3.

Quick Update:

All four minor templates (human, ghoul, stigmatic, wolf-blooded) are in and their chargen tested. Next is to get the xp gain system working.

I'm awaiting the hot debate whether or not "human" is a minor template.

Can we keep this thread to deaths of people we admire, please? Thanks.

(Talking about the Star Trek analysis, there.)

I know that I am a hundred posts away from this point now, but by god I'm going to make it.

@faraday said:

@Thenomain - Sorry if I'm being dense, but I'm not sure quite what "rules" you're looking for. Dice mechanics? Chargen instructions? As you say, FS3 is a framework not a complete game, so I'm not sure that what you're looking for actually exists.

That's what I was exploring at first and am now outright saying. If FS3 is a framework, then I am poking holes in @bored's complaints that it can be gamed. You can't game a framework. You need a system before it can be gamed. At worst you can complain about people's use of the toolkit, but I can't see any sincere argument to be made about how people might implement it (edit: unless the framework is so broken that it's difficult to implement it in a way that works; not the case here). Certainly not in the way that @bored has made it. That is one dead horse.

Maybe system toolkits need building instructions somewhere between Ikea (Fate Core) and kitbashing (Fudge), and that would be my first complaint about FS3. You know, how do I turn this collection of ideas into a system? I don't see this being your focus, tho, so I'm mainly throwing this out there to throw out there.

But it occurs to me, right this instant, is that I could be thinking about it wrong, and we could be talking about it wrong. FS3 is not a toolkit to a system, it's a system of guidelines. A system of guidelines is all a lot of RP-centric games need. They don't need a convoluted mash-up of six more or less similarly based game systems (WoD).

I'm going to have to think a bit more about what I mean by "a system of guidelines". I do wish that this system had more of them to make it easier to apply. How many skills is comfortable to balance things out? I could be over-thinking it. It happens.

@HelloRaptor said:

@Thenomain said:

I'm awaiting the hot debate whether or not "human" is a minor template.

If you mean template as in the general design/outline used to format something in a specific way, then technically every race would be a template.

In terms of RPGs a template generally refers to taking a base set of stats and then adding to/altering it based on a template, in which case 'human' is the base other templates are applied to.

Unless you're making some kind of existentialist joke, in which case .

I said minor template, dork.

And yes, I was also making some kind of existentialist joke, both about "races" in WoD and about nerds being nerds.

@Lithium

Are you talking about this?

http://www.lightstalking.com/what-is-kirlian-photography-the-science-and-the-myth-revealed/

What he meant was that, e.g., you would mean "electrical field". The term "energy" has a very specific scientific meaning, and part of what he was asking in there is for people to be more specific about what they meant by "energy".

I'm taking a liberal interpretation of what was actually said to seek discussion on all sides.

@faraday said:

@Thenomain said:

If someone doesn't have the skill, aren't they still capable if the associated attribute is above 1?

Sure, to some degree.

But here's the thing... there are a couple ways to approach character creation. (This is true in ANY system, IMHO.)

A lot of games are very specific about what happens if you try to do Skill-Thing without having Skill. Fate, for instance, says that unless you note otherwise you are at the can-at-average level. So if there is Drive in a game, then it's assumed that you know the basics of driving without taking a point. This is the nature of Fate, and it's pretty up-front about it.

Others, as @Alzie mentions, tell you what happens if you don't have any points in the skill. Storyteller/Storytelling penalize you one to three dice. I'd penalize someone another two dice if it's stick-shift because screw stick. (Note: I can't drive stick because screw stick.) This is the nature of WoD.

But I'm not done! Let's cast this in the Online Text Gaming aspect, where I think you have a much stronger point:

You've got X points. You can ask yourself...

1. What skills are likely to come up in the game? I'll take as many points as I can in those.
2. How do the dice work? I'll try to spend my points most efficiently to maximize my success chance.
3. What should my character have, assuming that the names of the levels are accurate reflections of reality?

One of the things we get in tabletop that we don't get online is that the way players take stats are a conversation between the players and the GM. Even in Fate Core they say this, if more in the sense of "if a player takes a skill, find an excuse to use it".

Game design from staff becomes a skill to make this work, here. I don't think #3 works without staff support, and that #1 is the most likely for the casual online gamer. To make #3 work, the player has to be on-board with it before they enter chargen, which makes it a social training issue and not a game-design issue. You need to do what these other RPGs do: Say, 'Hey, making a character is a discussion between you and the game.' Then explain the game.

And finally, I kind of want to explain why I think you're getting push-back here. See, a lot of us loudmouths are used to do-whatever-you-want, find-your-own-entertainment games like how nearly every World of Darkness game has been set up since MasqMush (our progenitor). The idea that we would not game the system is alien to a lot of us, so that should explain the probing questions.

Also, they're probing questions. I don't think any of them are meant to incite or harsh. You're taking it well, but it could look like a dog-pile.

Who the hell carries around a double-headed coin before they become a villain?

What? A lawyer?

Oh, carry on, then.

THE EXTENDED POST:

@faraday and I had an extremely long discussion about money and government in the future, and it's changed my plans. Originally I wanted to have USA break down into essentially city-states, everything dependent upon local governments and hyperlocal communities, both relying on the supply-and-demand which are the international corporations.

However, Faraday brought up a key problem: The SIN, the identifier that allows you to get things done. With one, you're marked for life but can get a lot of things done. Without one, you can get a lot of other things done but so much more is difficult to do like "rent an apartment" or "use a bank".

This all came from one of the key feels of Shadowrun that she expressed, and is the reason I set up this thread to begin with: Without the SINless, it isn't really Shadowrun.

I'll argue about a lot of things "not being Shadowrun", but I concede to this. But that brings up so many questions: Who manages the SIN? How do people get paid? How does cash work? My head spirals out of control, so I'm going to put down ideas.

1. The SIN is a GUID for individuals. It's a biometric and historical check comprising of DNA, fingerprints, loan history, criminal record, birth certificate and so on. It's everything we fear a universal ID card would be. Problem: Who controls this database? Is it global? Based on government you were born into? Is there an agreement among the corporations to share this information? Each answer changes a lot, such as "is the city-state sprawl feasible?"

2. Cash in a post-cash society. If we have the SIN, why do we need cash? What bank or government in the world would risk giving up cash? If the governments were really corporations, why wouldn't they have a 100% Traceable global standard? Or worse, a 100% corporate-only script? This latter one feeds into an idea for "Corporate Enclaves", i.e. living womb to grave in service to a corporation. You work sixteen tons and what do you get?

3. Digitally signed currency in a post-cash society. I think we're going in this direction. This is really where the discussion Faraday and I started with: How can you have credsticks when you don't trust anyone around you? For that, she convinced me that the future still needs cash, especially a future with criminals for hire in it. Mind you, if you're getting paid by a government or major corporation, then I'm going to assume that they can get you currency that's hidden in the system. (Thoughts on that one, @faraday? Also, others?)

A RESPONSE WHILE I WAS TYPING THE ABOVE:

@deadculture: Part of what I'm doing is seeing what Shadowrun would look like if it was designed today, right now, as I'm sitting outside a Wendy's looking at the rush hour traffic drive in front of the tri-state area's largest university (and one of the best cancer research hospitals in the country).

For example, the idea of a Southern USA Secession seems outright implausible to me, let alone the Great Ghost Dance reclaiming huge amounts of the southwestern USA, at least not with blood, a lot of blood, and I don't see the natives of this land having those kind of numbers. But that's just my explanation for saying: I don't think it would fly in today's culture.

I think hyper-localized societies makes sense. America is starting to "get" what New Yorkers have known for generations: That Europe is how it is for a reason of population and space, not because "lol Europe". Gibson's Bridge series and Miéville's Bas-Lag series both hit this hard, as well as pretty much anything written by Stephenson.

I do have a singular reason to focus on these authors as templates: I feel cyberpunk should be personal. It should be about people, at least mine will be. I find myself subconsciously focusing on how every element I'm inspecting affects people. Not just the heroes, because in my perfect cyberpunk fantasy world there are no heroes, or they are heroes in the same way that a firefighter or a civil rights champion is a hero: They're heroes to the people around them, the people whose lives they improve.

The world will be the world, but you? You're the person you want to be, if you can make enough space to be that person.

@Bobotron

I am both horrified and aroused.

@RDC said in NOLA: The Game That Care Forgot:

@Thenomain, if there's documentation on your github anywhere, we couldn't find it!

Er, no player chargen documentation. Most of it has been written by other people for other games, like Eldritch. This may be somewhere in my "to do" notes. Somewhere. Maybe. Sigh.

Creating and coding new stats is kind of mentioned in File 1a, the introduction to the Data Dictionary, which could also be called "abandon hope ye who are about to try to figure this out".

I'm more than willing to explain concepts and come up with examples for people who have installed the system and are standing there with a kind of "now what?" glazed look on their face. PM me here or Friend me on Skype with an explanation of who you are/why you're friending me so I don't outright reject it.

@Arkandel,

ThatGuyThere's self-described pedantic comment is that "no" is not a proper answer to "what's your email?" I'll agree that the lie of "I don't have one" is fine, but I obviously had to reply because technically correct is not always the best kind of correct, therefore making me technically correct or, er, something.

But you've nailed it. It's not like the cashiers themselves care. It's more that their managers care, and force them to care. The things I've seen managers do to get good metrics...

...but we have another thread for that kind of story.