Posts made by Thenomain

@faraday said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:

@Coin said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:

I believe Roll+Keep is also in L5R.

Yeah I was just braindead and used the wrong term. It's a dice pool system: stat + skill against a fixed target number. Modifiers add/remove dice.

Is it stat + skill in dice, or dice + stat + skill? Or ...

oWoD uses a success-count system. D&D uses a sum-total system. Both are against a target number or higher. nWoD uses something similar, but penalties affect the pool to roll, not the success count. Shadowrun used (last I knew) a dice pool with a total value count.

So it sounds like the system you're using is more nWoD/CoD. You could, y'know, just link to the core mechanic in a post.

Sorry, Dragon Age guys. These things happen. I am deeply suspicious of a game where playable from-the-fiction characters exist, no matter how little I'm told they will affect my ability to involve myself. And yet, my nerd-crush for Dragon Age is mighty, tho I preferred the grit and mud of Ferelden.

@Kanye-Qwest said in The Shame Game:

I'm just furious at all of you.

Your opinion about us is equally valid as @Coin's about your mom.

(edit: That was funnier before I saw it in print. Eesh.)

@Monogram said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:

@Kanye-Qwest said in Dragon Age: Smoke & Shadows:

What sort of system is this game using? How are you handling mages/apostates? Hanging out in the Gallows all the time doesn't sound super thrilling. Well. "Thrilling", perhaps, but maybe not fun.

They say FATE, but I logged on as a guest just to look. Their +sheets look like FS3. Which...is that FATE? I don't even know.

I believe FS3 is FUDGE, not FATE. Correct me if I'm wrong, @faraday.

@Auspice said in RL Anger:

@Saulot said in RL Anger:

The heat and two cats that can't get along. I can't wait until it rains this weekend. This shit feels like I'm back home.

Fuckin' seriously. I moved to the PNW last fall, from South Carolina. I wanted overcast! Rain! Temperatures below 85!

Have I yet mentioned Columbus? Only three times in the last week? Mm, overcast and 70. Rain is what we do for a living. It's like Seattle without all of the sea and good food and big name sports and diverse and nearby landscape, because who wants all of that?

... Goddammit.

@Vorpal

And by "meant to" I hope you also mean "like we have a choice". Law, for example, is an attempt to codify culture. Each law comes from an opinion, and each culture will value one opinion over another. That changes, and everyone who posts here can see it changing every day as we test and challenge and reason and find emotional value with those opinions.

Opinions and shaming are related but not the same topic, unless your opinion is "is this action shaming?" I feel that the answer comes in two steps. First, of course, that the person feels shamed. I admit that when I get a downvote my first thought is to wonder what I did wrong. I feel I have been shamed for having nothing more than an opinion. You can see my frustration with this by asking for a discussion, to bring the shame into the realm of reason.

Oh, yes, reason and logic aren't the same thing. Logic is mathematical. Reason is not. Moving on.

The second is what society thinks. Words here chosen carefully because yes, society is often wrong. If we can see this and accept this, then we can say that opinions can be wrong. Unfortunately, and here's where trying to have a rational discussion about this can fall apart, right and wrong for opinions is contextual.

Guy to some other guy's wife while they are both standing there: You look gorgeous tonight.

Guy to some other guy while he and his wife are both standing there: Your wife looks gorgeous tonight.

Same opinion. One of them in modern context has an undertone of ownership rights between husband and wife. If the woman chose to be offended, in modern day America it would be modestly accepted. If you accept that all people are equal, she'd be right to call the expression of the latter opinion "wrong".

The statement that all opinions carry equal strength is logically fallacious.

So what about shaming? To me, shaming is when someone tries to attack you verbally or emotionally with the express purpose to belittle or demean.

So what about our beloved downvote? Well sure, if you want to take it as being shamed then I won't argue with that. The problem, tho, is that you don't know. I don't know. It has nothing to do with seeing who's voting, it has to do with there not being enough information.

In spite of my emotions, I don't feel there's enough reason to feel shamed over it. What we do with our emotions are up to us. There are so, so many other emotional attacks in this hobby that need addressed that I'm hoping the time I'm taking here to explain why I and others should merely eye-roll at the downvote helps someone else focus on bigger things.

Like VASpider or MGMT, both epic shamers.

Wait, Theno, aren't you shaming them? I am. Your point being that shaming can't be true? Like any form of violence, as a tool it can answer problems. I don't think many people know that, tho, and if we start telling shamers of the more poisonous kind to go to hell, then we can get to the point where we have better societal rules and therefore can break them more reasonably.

@Arkandel

Does it feel weird when they change who plays Spider Man in the movies, or turning Thor into a woman? I think you under-estimate people's ability to just roll with it, especially when changing medium.

That said, I do hope they don't allow major game characters to be played. My view, there.

@ThatGuyThere said in Shadowrun: Modern:

I think a huge reason of why Seattle is grunge.

A huge reason of "Why Seattle?" is the authors lived there.

@deadculture said in Shadowrun: Modern:

It is true that Case, Bobby and the solo whose name escapes me right now were all white

Molly Millions, aka Blondie, aka Debbie Harry.

Shame on you for not remembering this bit of trivia from the 80s.

Note to everyone:

If you have dick-pics on your computer, please close the window before you go in for face-to-face computer tech support.

@faraday said in Shadowrun: Modern:

Oh, animism, not animalism. Important distinction

What? I didn't say...

... Oh goddamn it, iOS auto-correct. Er, yes, animism. Animistic. Animaniacs.

And now, double-posting time! Since @faraday decided to post while I was pontificating (sans pontiff).

@faraday said in Shadowrun: Modern:

@Thenomain said in Shadowrun: Modern:

All spirits aren't animalistic in SR, though

News to me? Rock spirits, building spirits, fire hydrant spirits...

Absolutely.

c.f. Animism.

Because Shadowrun needs a facelift, and facelifts kind of suck so why not do full-body reconstructive cyborgization? And while I'm sitting on my pasty white butt, dwelling on a Soapbox thread that's months forgotten, why not prod at it?

Because if you do enough of a reconstructive cyborgization, it no longer bears anything but a passing resemblance to the original. That's how I feel about the new BSG. It's awesome. It's better than the original. But it would have been just as awesome if they hadn't used the BSG name at all. All they gained from copying the original were some people/place names and the general gist of "aircraft carrier in space after robotic annihilation".

Theseus' Paradox.

There are five version of Dungeons and Dragons. There are three-to-five versions of World of Darkness. There are how many versions of Shadowrun. One of these has no game world to start over with. One of these makes minor changes. One of these starts from scratch at least once. Is D&D 5th not D&D? Is Shadowrun 4th not Shadowrun? Is ... new World of ... Darkness ... 2nd ... whatever whatever ... not WoD? (Okay, it's CoD these days, but let's not go there just now.)

There was a game released that was called "Monte Cook's World of Darkness". Was that not a WoD game? A lot of people said it wasn't, because it wasn't, because it was something entirely different, but it was a World of Darkness game. The World of Darkness suppliment "Mirrors" was all about how to make it not the same world. Is that not World of Darkness?

You can't tell me that I'm not creating Shadowrun just because I'm not following 30 years of footsteps. There is too much precedent that this is not how it works.

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.

@faraday said in Shadowrun: Modern:

@Thenomain -- No it was definitely Chicago. The location where the nuke went off in Burning Bright was at the FASA offices on Cermak.

Not familiar with it, just the adventure module that introduced the Insect Spirits.

All spirits aren't animalistic in SR, though

News to me? Rock spirits, building spirits, fire hydrant spirits...

and if you buy the basic idea of overpopulation-induced sprawls, Seattle makes as much sense as anywhere to be a metroplex given its proximity with a bunch of other cities.

Yeah, but it's ... it's Seattle. c.f. Columbus, Ohio. It's central to quite a few major urban areas, but it's Columbus, Ohio.

Back to the original topic though, I can't help but wonder... if there are so many things about SR that you don't like, why do SR at all [...] It reminds me of the reimagined Battlestar series, which I think succeeded in spite of fans of the old series, not because of it. It probably would have done just as well (if not better) had it just been something else.

Yes. This is it exactly. They did it out of love of BSG specifically and the genre in general and looked at it and said, "What if we do this." I'm going to hazard (without checking) that the BSG reboot was phenomenally more popular than its original.

Because Shadowrun needs a facelift, and facelifts kind of suck so why not do full-body reconstructive cyborgization? And while I'm sitting on my pasty white butt, dwelling on a Soapbox thread that's months forgotten, why not prod at it?

And most famously: Because it's there. How close can its soul be captured and re-cast? Sure, the BSG Reboot didn't do it perfectly, but the original BSG had time enough while running away from the genocidal Cylons to stop by a bloody casino planet.

Believe me, I'm concerned that I'm throwing grit and grime on Nerps. (Also, Nerps fer chrissake.) I don't think Shadowrun was ever really meant to be this complex and deep world, which may be why some big people have turned it into this complex and deep world. And I know you're saying, "But sourcebooks, etc." Yeah, every writer wants to keep the lights on, and if it wasn't for the Cyberpunk genre getting sucker-punched by World of Darkness, we would be complaining about them being as bad as TSR/WOTC for barfing forth supplements.

Tho speaking of D&D, the Volo's Guides were excellent pieces of work.

I loved Shadowrun when I was younger. I can't imagine playing it now because of its cartoony, innocent 80s-like take on the world.

@peasoupling said in CoD - Victorian - Penny Dreadful-ish.:

I sometimes wonder why fantasy/science-fiction settings have to copy our familiar forms of bigotry and discrimination for the sake of 'realism'.

Two reasons.

1. Because our modern bigotry is formed from historical views (and as you admit, even our modern views are pretty damn progressive comparatively and therefore not even "realistic"). But more importantly:
2. Because that's what we know, and connecting to the reader tends to be kind of important to a writer, at least a writer who wants to sell stories.

@faraday

I haven't been involved in Shadowrun since 2nd Edition, and while I thought it was Denver that was the epicenter of the BUG SPIRITS!! invasion, the idea that all spirits are animistic is one of the things I'd like to kill off. Also, that bugs are evil. For a magic-world Other, we turn to the octopus. (Kidding, @Chime!)

The sourcebooks were touch and go for me, just like the doubt in the back of my head that always said, "Seattle is the epicenter of a great sprawl because ... why exactly? I mean, it's just Seattle." (And I live in Columbus, the Midwest's Seattle.)

@Arkandel said in Shadowrun: Modern:

@Thenomain said in Shadowrun: Modern:

Hopefully people can see why I didn't start with my plans until I got a good survey response.

Yes, but it's also true most people show up to express an opinion if they have one in the first place (I might neither agree or disagree with your take on Shadowrun but could still be interested in giving it a try if it was available) for example - so a survey like that shows you those who have strong views.

Yeah, but I wanted their views, not their response to my views.

For instance: Fuck Dragons.

For instance: Shadowrun without Metahumans (or Post-Cyberpunk Magika) could be the bomb.

Neither of these answer the question: What is Shadowrun? Also, the question "What is Shadowrun?" would have been horrible because nobody, then, is expressing their desires, but arguing over what it is and isn't.

Nope, I did it the best way I knew how, and seeing how the discussion evolves the second I put in my views, I'm glad that I did it that way.

I'm not sure what the term I'm looking for as mood for the game. "Cosmopolitan" is not right, because it implies more inclusiveness than I want. "Metropolitan" is much closer. The world is going to devolve into a more city-state mentality due to the limits of resources and an increase in restrictions from all sides, political and economic. I would love it if the Shadowrun Seattle was different than Shadowrun New York different than Shadowrun Paris.

You know, like the world works now, but for different reasons and to different outcomes.

@faraday

Which is why I'm not going to axe them, it just would pretty damn awesome even without them.

What I want, instead, is to push that aspect even higher, make a statement about modern day gender and race issues. Even without that, I think we're ready for more de-Tolkeinized settings, and let regional cultures reign a little stronger. Those Megacorps could use the pressure.

Hopefully people can see why I didn't start with my plans until I got a good survey response. We nerds are distracted by minutiae and take any chance at going down the rat-hole into distraction du jour.

I am sincerely thinking about axing the Shadowrun-style dragons, because Dragon CEOs my ass. Dragon President of the United States super-powerful Marty Stu damned dragons no way in hell.

I never liked the Conspiracy Theory side of Shadowrun. I could be alone in that.

@Sunny said in CoD - Victorian - Penny Dreadful-ish.:

Why is 'how women and minorities are treated' the benchmark for making a game 'historical enough'?

Because this is exactly the time period where we have our modern take and modern problems about both. I saw on some Nova episode or other that the reason for the "hidden civilization" myths of Africa and America was because the European explorers and historians did not give any credence to the idea that the natives they discovered could possibly have that kind of civilization.

It's also a reflection of the social issues we see today, which are mostly about race but also still some about women, and in more recent days about gender as a whole.

Gender and race issues were still pretty damn big around the late Elizabethan. Add "now" to "then" and I'd be surprised if your historical game didn't make a definitive statement about it, even if that statement is that things happened so that we don't have any issues.

@Ganymede said in New Player Onboarding:

@Thenomain said in New Player Onboarding:

Now I know that @Saulot doesn't always think I am the most awesome thing since sliced bread. I don't know how I'm going to live.

From what I know, I don't know how you go on living either.

Here's some aloe.

I want some bread with my whine.

Player volunteers are the best staff a game can ever have. Unfortunately, they're also the worst. Support the good ones with praise.

@Coin

I want my races to be solidly based on myth, and it fits the regionalism and personal worldview that I think is modern to our current state of mind.

@DnvnQuinn said in Shadowrun: Modern:

Well a world without metahumans is basically...Cyberpunk 2020.

I disagree. It could just as easily be Cast a Deadly Spell in the 2100s instead of the 1940s. Or it could be a take on Gibson's Bridge series instead. Or his "Fragments of a Hologram Rose", which is beautifully about people. (Hell, everything in Burning Chrome is.)

I imagine CP2020's magic would be more psychic anyhow, pushing it more toward space opera and science fiction. I have read one or two magazine articles about adding magic to CP2020, but it was very 90s. Very 90s.

The rules are so close anyways.

What rules? I'm world-building. Rules will come later. Much later.