Wora, Swofa, Soapbox, et al., have been the OOC Room of the hobby: A lot of people think it's pointless or even toxic, most of the real work is done behind the scenes, but still important to keep conversation and socialization alive and a surprising number of useful things comes out of it.
Mind you, only a fool will keep moldy bread around just in case they need penacillin, but if you can keep your skunkworks separate from your core development, then keep it around.
The Quarian. Always the Quarian.
I read a tweet from the guy who invented Inbox Zero (Merlin Mann, btw) who quoted the bit about not being able to keep quality artists and writers because they're going to better paying jobs with more creator control.
To which he says, "Well duh."
Sales could be dropping because people are expecting more and Marvel is less capable of delivering, not because of diversity.
Mind you, I hear rumor of a Squirrel Girl TV series. Oh yes.
@Monogram said in Mass Effect: Andromeda: The Thread:
Many people forget that the beloved ME 1(which is still my favorite in the first trilogy)was the exact same way. Exact same looking caves, or bases or hideouts.
Having played ME1 about 5 times, I have to say this isn't the same. The repetitiveness is there and it can be distracting, but the universe is huge, the situations are varied, and there are more little cut-scenes that let the scenario designers put in new camera angles and close-ups. Sure this is Floating Transport #2, but battling rebellious biotics leading up to a question of how I ultimately deal with them went a far way from keeping it from being more than Floating Transport #2. And I can't think of a single time where enemies in ME1 spawned out of nowhere; appeared around rocks with a Shepherd commentary of "oh no, ambush!", sure, but the set pieces were thought-out, and that made all the difference.
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It's good to hear something more concrete than what the industry had done in the past, and even better to hear a Triple-A publisher coming in to save a game than to let it flounder.
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I'm done with ME:A, now, and I've decided I liked it. Nowhere as much as The Shepherd Trilogy, but quite a lot.
Except for one thing. Just one. All the rest are little annoyances, some of them still being flags triggering the wrong comments (I still killed that person, thanks):
The gigantic building mystery surrounding the Nexus.
Nnnnnnnggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Thanks for that, guys. Really. Maybe we'll get some DLC about this, but if that was the plan then they shouldn't have broached it this far to begin with. Nnnngh.
@Insomnia said in Mass Effect: Andromeda: The Thread:
@TNP It's usually why i avoid early access games.
Those games say "early access". I've bought three early access games and enjoyed the hell out of them, watched them grow and felt a stronger bond to the developer.
What left Andromeda buggy was EA's fault, the same issue that made Dragon Age 2 a bland and incomplete game, the same problem that plagues a lot of the games industry and what makes CD Projekt RED a stand-out.
But you know what, I can't get up in arms about things like bad lip-sinking anymore. Making the game unplayable, yes, this game needed more QA playtesting, but I'm getting fixes and the team is responding to feedback. Back in 2003, Troika released "Temple of Elemental Evil", pushed by Atari under threat of breech of contract, and was not allowed to release fixes. The game is nearly unplayable, but fans themselves rallied around the company and made a number of game patches for it. This was our lives a decade ago.
Andromeda is not unplayable. We're getting fixes and more for the bugs and several shortcomings. (A new character creation tool? Great!) This is better than most Triple-A games get. I would have rather waited and gotten a better game, but with a good game and an understanding developer, I can't get riled.
As much as I like the One Roll Engine (Weird War One, et al.) for superhero games, in fact the only superhero RPG system I've read that made me interested in superhero games, the number of die type and player involvement in deciding which dice to roll and which ones to use.
I did also like Mutant City Blues, but Gumshoe RPG is probably not great for casual role-play. Then again, you know when you engage it and when you don't.
So I suppose a huge concern is which superhero genre you're aiming for. Maybe this has been answered but I missed it.
@Monogram said in Mass Effect: Andromeda: The Thread:
Though, they did make Singularity much better in this game, so I can't bitch too much about it.
Good lord, Singularity has saved me so many times that I don't know what to say about this. Well, I can say "different strokes" (but also possibly "whachu talkin' 'bout, Willis?" would also be appropriate ;).
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For once, I didn't mind a little fourth-wall breaking from Andromeda. Sure, the ME3 Citadel DLC was a non-stop nod to the fans, but it was so good that it is entirely forgiven. Someone on the Tempest said "I thought this was going to be the end-game". Yeah, good on the designers for making what happened feel like a climax, without over-promising.
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Still. Not. Finished. Still. Enjoying.
@VulgarKitten said in RP Ice Breakers:
I don't believe you actually RP!
Maybe I only RP with the right people.
@Arkandel said in RP Ice Breakers:
Ice breaker: Join a scene and don't make yourself un-roleplayable.
It's that easy.
Once on Haunted Memories, three of us were having a little scene in a little park. One woman came by and we posed for her, tried to include her, but she ignored us entirely. Soon, a man came along and was 'surprised' to meet her there. Then they left to have sex.
It's not just about being approachable, it's also very much about finding people who want to be approached and then figuring out whether or not it's a fit.
I do want to state with as much emphasis as I can without being seen as insane: If you RP with someone and find that you two don't fit, it's not time wasted. You RP'd. Success! Two players now know each other a little better. More success! Now you or they might see you in a scene and know that they can at least play with you without wanting to tear your ears off, and visa-versa. Success?
Yeah, why not: Success.
Why split date and time when there is timestamp available?
I'm thinking enactor dbref may also be good, a quick and dirty nospoof.
Also a pony.
@Derp said in PC antagonism done right:
I think that antagonism only works in a game if the staff are willing to say 'this is how the actual antagonism is going to go down, and if you step out of line with that, there will be serious consequences from both sides'.
"Let's keep it Cat & Mouse, not Cat & Missile." - The Mighty Monarch.
I've been meaning to ask this for a while: Which crew member is it who has Plants vs. Zombies dolls in their bunk?
Apocalypse World is built like a Mud: There is zero question what you roll if you want to do X. Burning Wheel and it's adorable younger brother Mouse Guard are the same way. FreeMarket (another Luke Crane game) ditto. These are all games where if you want to affect the game world, you must engage the RPG systems exactly as written.
ApocWorld, unlike the rest, also demands that the PC roles are special, acknowledging that the characters tho they may be utterly screwed over by their own actions or the dice, are always the most interesting people in the world, that the world is their story and visa versa.
I was hoping when I started this post that I'd come up with some interesting conclusion or solution to use ApocEngine on a Mush, but that didn't happen. Ah well.
Edit: Oh yes, now I remember. I think people would love Apocalyose World, if not other PbtA systems, because of how utterly straightforward and brutally honest it is, which are two things that I think any gritty fantasy game should be: Straighforward and brutally honest.
@Ominous said in Suitable system for a gritty fantasy game:
I have the 2nd edition of WFRP. How similar are they?
I don't know. I saw 600+ pages and balked. Yeah, I know WFRP is big, but something about it is inviting, readable. My brother likes reading RPGs as books, and WFRP is one of them. I flipped through Zweihander, saw "magboots" in one place and a page dedicated to "trinket value"--buying, selling, trading, really kind of a cool thing to see in a gritty realism game, but it was enough to make me wait, and wait I shall.
@fatefan said in Suitable system for a gritty fantasy game:
If I thought the PbtA engine was in any way translatable to MU*ing
I know. I've been musing on ApocEngine games and I can't see it reasonably scaling past 6 or 7.
@Monogram said in Mass Effect: Andromeda: The Thread:
No, it's not Witcher 3, and frankly, I doubt we'll see game in the near future coming close to how well done it was.
Every time Projekt RED says something about Cyberpunk, I feel a little funny in my pants region. For one, they say it's making Witcher 3 an easy project by comparison. Can't wait.
For those who haven't seen yet, the upcoming 1.05 patch notes.
Notes of note:
According to ArsTechnica, Bioware is also looking into more Scott Ryder romance options, including gay options.
@fatefan said in Suitable system for a gritty fantasy game:
Zweihander is a WFRP 2e retroclone that might work well, but it may be too crunchy (maybe?) for some. Also, there's lots of assumed PC death that MU*ers may not want to deal with.
I just downloaded the free preview PDF and... this book is six hundred and seven frickin' pages. That is all.
I keep having staff ask for a LFRP flag, so someone must be using it. And a channel. And auto add to the channel when you set the flag. That person isn't me; the tools for finding RP are Who, Where, Hangouts, Directory, Map, Events, BBoards, and Faction Channels.
How do you keep the OOC Lounge from becoming trash? The same way you keep channels from becoming trash, the bboards, the scenes, and @mail: You stop the trash talk.
Players have some control over this, asking people to calm down or respect others, and for those who take that as their cue to troll you kick it to staff. If staff refuses to do anything about it, you've learned something about the staff on that game; not exactly a win-win but I'll take all the silver linings you've got.
@Arkandel said in WW released Dark Pack guidelines:
Sometimes I feel MU* have been really pushing the envelope on the latter with their super detailed wikis, going as far as to copy verbatim the texts, effects and of course rolls of every power or special ability, for instance.
This is why I asked about the text. The rule for Onyx Path is no more than 50 words copied from the text (last I checked). I know games that use far more than 200.
The interpretation I'm taking now is "don't make us care", where "care" is largely about making money. It is a huge amount of leeway that they are giving us, and I am frankly impressed.
I had someone ask me if it allows for using book text on, say, a Mu*. I think the concern here was how much leniency does the word "use" give?