@admiral said in Random Oddness or 'Is This Normal?':
for months and months now
You know what is a sign is that you need to get something looked at?
This. This is a sign that you need to get something looked at.
Fingers crossed.
@admiral said in Random Oddness or 'Is This Normal?':
for months and months now
You know what is a sign is that you need to get something looked at?
This. This is a sign that you need to get something looked at.
Fingers crossed.
@thenomain said in Why did you pick your username?:
Because it’s impossible to get me to shut up.
To clarify: I also often quote myself to clarify. And edit my posts. And expand. And and and...
Sometime in my teens, a coder looked at me and said, "You're like a Non-Maskable Interrupt." So I went by "The NMI" for a while.
This was stupid, but not as stupid as "Lance Peterson" which is the name I chose before that.
Because why not.
Shut up.
So I played around with "The Non-Maskable Interrupt" but that was way too long, and too on-the-nose. Why have a cyber-handle in the cyber-days of cyber when it's not clever? (Not clever people are not clever.)
So it's "THE NOn-MAskable INterrupt."
Still on-the nose, a little self-demeaning, but not as obvious until people ask me about it. And seriously, if you can find another Thenomain out there let me know so we can prove multiverse theory.
This is why it's shortened to "Theno", not "Then". Tho someone called me "The Non-Name" recently and I liked that quite a bit.
@warma-sheen said in Plot session duration:
I'm not offended. I'm surprised. I'm not used to you being so hyperbolic.
Then I apologize.
Also, if 'Thenomain' could have a middle name, which would imply a last name, it would be "Hyperbole".
Let me try again without it:
Having grown up playing and coding for World of Darkness games, I would never trust the greater populace to be honest about their pre-scene rolls. The idea of throwing someone out for being dishonest just doesn't click with me; safety systems aren't just there to stop cheaters, but to keep the game system as consistent as possible. (edit: so the hyperbole logic goes if you're not trying to be consistent, then why try at all? — this is where that statement comes from)
In my experience, trusting people to adjudicate their own game rules goes one of two ways:
I get unreasonably snippy when I think people aren't trying to push everyone around them toward #1, falling into Black or White, like those two events are all that people are going to do. (15 yard penalty. Fourth down.)
I feel like a <enter political or social jerkwads of your choice> about it sometimes.
Because it’s impossible to get me to shut up.
Smacks of "justify the in-game bonuses that you thought were optional". Bleh. Sorry to hear it.
@warma-sheen said in Plot session duration:
That's an extreme leap, man. Feels like you're trolling me.
Is it? Even after my examples of situations where the situation can be sped up without relying on the kindness of strangers? Isn't it possible that we're approaching the issue from different angles? I feel like you're dismissing my post in order to be offended but eh, you do you.
I'm the last person that would disengage from the game system
I have no idea who you are, really. Mentioning FS3 explains a lot, though, because FS3 players tend to be a lot more laid back about "winning" (i.e., it's not the goal). I would never code something without backing up that trust with system checks--trust, but verify. I would honor it if that was the game culture.
The entire purpose behind the practice is to be able to spend as much scene time as possible engaging in the game system and the game theme together in RP.
In scenes that I've participated in, the ratio of prep vs. RP tends to be inversely proportional. (c.f. "different angles".) In a scene with that much prep-work, I want to get in, roll the dice, and get out so that I may RP about it later. I personally would be happy if it was, "I attack, swish, man my character just slipped on the slime hahaha" and then de-construct the scene after the fact, but I realize this is my Tabletop RP showing and not what most Mushers want.
The best way I've seen has been:
It's kludgy, but is equal parts tabletop-system and equal parts roleplay-pose extravaganza. It still takes a long time, but it narrows down the scene as best as I've seen it.
I know it can be better.
But I also know that unless it happens naturally people probably won't do it, so spending time on the tools is pointless.
If you’re not going to engage in the game system, then why use the system at all? Why worry about it?
Lack of prep system. Being able to prove the rolls is very important so people can’t just say, “I got 100 successes.”
No it’s not rocket science, but it takes time and we are a hobby that enjoys reinventing the wheel.
I suppose rolling to the job would be fine, but to me that would be even more work on behalf of the scene runner.
I do know a lot of people who put their prep stuff on their character wiki in a sub page, so it’s not like people don’t, but it still takes time for the rest of it.
@insomniac7809 said in Geist 2.0 Kickstarter:
after he drove trans RPG developer Avery Alder, writer of Monsterhearts, out of publishing for some time
...Why?
I suspect that the answer is that Zak Smith is a professional troll, but I'm always willing to be disappointed in assuming that some people are jerks for the lulz.
I've been in scenes that have taken a half an hour, and occasionally more, to set the "pre-scene powers, rolls, and equipment". WoD, you saucy bastard.
2-3 hours per scene is a good solid number. I normally see the scene start to fall apart by then.
--
I started answering the questions in the OP then I realized: I'm answering these no differently than I would for people asking how to run a module for a tabletop group. The answer is that there is no single answer, that you read the group and adjust based on that. Knowing how to do this requires experience, and gaining experience requires participation. I don't think a survey is going to cover all the differences in play that we have.
--
- What duration - as measured in hours - is ideal, acceptable, tolerable and (if there's such a thing) 'too much'?
"Too much" is when the people involved say they're done. I'm going to stick to my 2-3 hour number for now.
- How easy is it for a PrP runner to predict how long a scene is likely to run in the first place? What are some good ways to make rough estimates?
Run plots. Pay attention to how they worked out. Keep running them.
Be in plots. Pay attention to how they're run. Keep paying attention.
- Should a projected duration be advertised as part of plots?
Duration in hours, or in number of scenes? Is this even possible? See Above.
- What's the proper way to break longer scenes down?
The way that's most natural for the scene and those involved, though I would argue "one scene" is always completely over when the scene itself is over. If it's going on too long, then learn from it and don't do that again.
- How do you handle players having to go in mid-scene due to RL
The same way you do any other scene: Either there is an out for them right there, or you work out the consequences later.
It would be completely dickish to force a negative consequence because they have a life. Remember Rule #1: RL Comes First. If there is a negative consequence, make it interesting or at the very least make it because they were on the losing side.
All IC situations come from OOC considerations, from the very plot to the decisions people make to stay in or get out of it.
Someone in another thread said that Zak Smith is no longer involved in WW nor Vampire 5e.
True? Not true?
--
I heard about the "alt-right edgelord" stuff for Changeling too, but I'm taking a wait-and-see approach. Right now that waiting means I'm not supporting Onyx Path at this time. Sorry guys.
Once again, Tabletop Simulator with Discord chat is the shit. Hearing people I've Mu*d with laugh and swear at each other (at the same time) has amazing healing properties.
Bravo, you glorious jerks.
@lithium said in Good or New Movies Review:
And sometimes a movie is just /bad/. Regardless of how many explosions and how many times you take advantage of Megan Fox's ass. I'm looking at you Michael Bay.
I’m looking at Megan Fox’s ass. Who wants to look at Michael Bay?
—
I need to find the interview I once heard with a multi-award winning French director who once, to prove a point, made a movie with his direction, excellent actors, good end to end, but with a bad script. It fared very poorly. His thesis: Everything else can be salvaged except for a bad script.
C.f., Avatar. (I mean the Cameron one, but the Last Airbender movie counts too.)
My 100-Percent favorite thing to know about the pets of humans:
The Dog: "Hey animal that is hanging around us while we're hunting, you are also very good at hunting, you like packs, we like packs, you are now part of our pack. As we grow together we will make you one of us, and like us we will make you the tool we need at the time, across the ages, as one with us, forever." / "Okay!"
The Cat: "Hey animal that is hanging around us while we're chasing rats off barges, you are very good at hunting rats, you like hunting rats, we like it when you hunt rats, how would you like to also be fed by us when you're not also eating rats and in exchange we won't treat you like vermin because you don't eat our grain. As we grow we promise not to make you do anything else, forever." / "Okay!"
(I tried to narrow down the parrot, et al., but the conversation in my head was more that of someone tricked into paying a roommate's rent for free. Birds are crafty buggers.)
@admiral
That’s fair. Hey, maybe you meant that the dude is tragic like AIDS, or was the AIDS of oWoD (I think that was Gypsy, myself), but yeah YMMV.
Interestingly, I tripped on an interview with the original Mage developer and he said the writer of Gypsy was surprised there was such animosity toward it. I think this was a problem with oWoD, where they were messing around with not just horror myths, but with cultures as well. When they were messing up basics of language for their game (the clan name “Toreador” still makes me a little sad), we could just play along with it. When it was a people about as oppressed as you could get pre-America, I can understand why it would be maligned.
OWoD: the epitome of YMMV.
It sounds like the game is still accessible to those who do not know or care to know about the meta plot. This is fantastic.
@admiral said in oWoD - Is there such thing as a good one?:
I just compared Sam Haight to AIDS.
Oh yes, I caught that. You said that AIDS, like Sam Haight, was funny because it's been "long enough". You said AIDS was funny. It's hard to miss.
I know I'm not great with expressing a tone, so I empathize, but really? Really? I can't imagine what you were going for here. I really can't.
Also, Sam Haight was funny because White Wolf was serious at first. It's now funny for them, because distance is a classic element of humor, but for the rest of us it was funny at the time because of WW's distance from reality. c.f., The Gypsy Book.
@admiral said in oWoD - Is there such thing as a good one?:
AIDS is funny
Really? Is this where you want to go?
@bobotron said in oWoD - Is there such thing as a good one?:
I mean what do you define as a 'parody' game. Something where the Sabbat are playing Baby Football through the streets while Gangrel powerslam their enemies from the sky in flight form?
Isn't this just...an oWoD game?
I mean you've described Tartarus and Dark Metal pretty well.
@friarzen said in A new platform?:
@thenomain What are these "spawns" you speak of?
Spawned windows. Using pattern matching to push input into a different screen. A lot of people use it for the channels that Faraday is accusing that we just plain put up with, tho a lot of people don't just put up with them if there are options. Atlantis (Mac) has them and Potato (cross-platform) does too.
Here's this thread of...dear god, two years ago.