Posts made by Three-Eyed Crow

@WTFE said in FS3:

The problem with FS3 is that the number of times you do actually have to roll is so small that any failure is magnified tremendously. If you only roll three times in a combat, even a single failure is going to make a "can't miss, hotshot badass" look "ho-hum". If the character is, by reading the sheet, supposed to be "ho-hum" that's not a problem. But when the character sheet reads "this guy is a veritable god of combat" failing even one out of three is pretty bad.

I think this is a really good observation, though I'm not sure how best to address it. FS3 dice are very forgiving until they're...randomly not, and there's sometimes just this 'Whelp, that weirdly happened' feel to Failure, rather than any kind of opportunity to make it fun and interesting. Maybe everyone should build in an RP Hook 'flaw' they could exploit to earn a Luck point in Failure situations? I don't know. They're rare enough that they should be cool/exploitable for some drama, not just 'huh, shrug, that dun work.'

This is more an issue in straight-up rolls, not so much opposed/+combat situations.

@kitteh
Yeah, that's fair, and it wasn't aimed at you personally. I've just heard it A LOT over the years, from players who were waaaaaaaaaaaaay less constructive, and have a kind of Pavlovian reaction to it, because I don't think it's the case (and because I've had to look at the kind of federal shooting data @The-Sands is talking about for work in past lives). The thread has moved on, and better for it.

@The-Sands said in BSG: Unification:

Of course one big problem that just about every single game system has is 'realism'. Over in the FS3 thread people were complaining about how often an expert character misses in combat. Actually, that's pretty darn realistic.

Indeed it is. My eyes glaze over every time I read the 'I suck because I miss!' complaints. The enemies miss a hell of a lot more than the PCs do, and happier I am for it.

I get that missing isn't fun and, more practically, combat rounds where nothing gets hit makes things take forever. Having adminned an FS3 1.0 game and played on a lot of the 2.0 ones, I assure you, we don't miss near as often in 3.0 or get KO'd anywhere NEAR as often.

@ThatGuyThere
Oh, yeah, I agree completely. A lot of the complaints I hear about FS3, I instantly think, 'Well, the GM was clearly doing xyz WRONG in that scenario...' But you can say the same thing about FATE (a fun game I've been involved in terrible campaigns of because of the runner), d20, or anything. I don't know how prominently to put the 'don't be stupid' language, because with some people it'll just never be enough. As was discussed earlier in this thread, I find the general way the combat system spits out results cool and feel like it gives me and the runner freedom to decide what happens that I like. Other players who want more structure/direction find a simple EVADES confusing. It's a balancing act.

And, again, you 100% cannot fix stupid with rules.

@faraday said in FS3:

I get that some people aren't happy with an Expert succeeding at a routine task 98% of the time - they'd want it to be 100%. What I don't get is people acting like it's some kind of failure-ridden abomination when the math says otherwise. FS3 has the same basic roll mechanic as many of the leading RPG systems.

This is not a problem on the games you GM or the FS3 games I play on for any length of time, which are run by sane people who don't make you roll for stupid, mundane things you'd obviously succeed at.

Unfortunately, the ease-of-use of the system makes it appealing to everyone, and everyone is...not sane. I have VIVID memories of my brief time on Battlestar Pegasus. Which was a dumpster fire in any number of ways (oh, games made with dbs stolen from other games, are you ever a good idea?). But one of the particularly stupid aspects of it was that there were...god, something like 20 action skills? For non-combat roles and everyday military job-like things. It was set up to make you roll for EVERYTHING. It was some dumb shit.

Obviously I left Pegasus quickly for a whole host of reasons, and you can't fix bad people. But some guidance for how GMs should approach the system might be helpful just so they didn't...do that.

@faraday said in BSG: Unification:

I don't know quite where the sweet spot is for campaign length, but a frequent change of scenery is definitely something I think is key to the game's concept. The freedom of being able to go different places was the primary reason I picked a First Cylon War setting over the traditional Second War one.

Yeah, this is what's always made me REALLY want to dig into the First Cylon War as a setting. The holocaust of the reimagined series is INCREDIBLY compelling, but it makes those games difficult to sustain. You always have to kind of reach to find excuses for new PCs to rando show up (though we managed on Cerb and other games), and it cuts off a huge amount of the setting. I love how on BSU you can treat Tauron/Picon/Canceron/Etc. as actual planets that are being tangibly fought for, not just blasted wastes people occasionally get sentimental about.

@DownWithOPP
Fara's bbpost on the latest plot explicitly said that the return to Canceron was due to the two top 'next' colony ideas being ones that she wanted to take some time to do up big. Idk. It hasn't felt particularly long to me (the last Canceron plot did, but this one's had a different feel, at least to me). Mileage, sir, it varies.

ETA: That being said, I'm REALLY excite about where the next plot might be. If it was either the thing I voted for or one of the things people were bandying around on channel most often, I want it done up proper.

@Runescryer said in Android Client other than Mukluk?:

@Paris

I'm happy with Mukluk, myself. But, I think that BlowTorch offers activity notification like you're looking for.

It does, but is unfortunately worse than Mukluk in other areas. Or at least was when I tried it. I couldn't have more than one session open at a time (so no multi-mushing on my phone), and it tended to time out if I wasn't active for a stretch. You can tell it's built for MUDing, where you'd be constantly active in one window, though I found it functional enough for popping in to check mail and stuff.

@Rook said in RL Anger:

People who schedule 1.5 hour meetings to get your help on something, and then show up late and unprepared.

Special hell reserved for the people who do this on Fridays. In the morning. GTFO.

I imagine a 20-year-old today looking at a floppy disk the same way I look at my dad's 8-track tapes.

And I realize I have joined the Olds.

Yeah, fair. There are people in India and who've lived primarily on Native American Reservations who still have largely positive connotations toward the swastika, and to whom the Nazi connotation is learned in history class later in life. My first job as a reporter was on a Res in rural AZ and it mind-fucked me to see it on random old bridges and in regional art. But I got used to it after awhile. The corruption of positive symbology by ignorant fucks is, sadly, an age-old tradition.

The story behind Pepe the Frog makes me sad as hell, and is really telling about the power of the internet to make something innocuous into something atrocious. It was created and used for years with zero hateful associations, but because it was adopted by fuckstains (HELLO 4CHAN USERS THE NEXT TIME YOU INVADE THIS BOARD, YOU ARE HORRIFIC FUCKSTAINS) so completely it's now pretty much impossible for it to mean anything but white nationalist/anti-Semitic garbage.

I don't put all the lack of utilization of FS3's features on the want to just be the one to one-shot kill things (though I agree that impulse is sure as hell there). FS3 combat is very easy if you're just doing the basic shoot-until-baddies-fall-down, and it's easy to get into a groove where you're just riding the simplicity (both for efficiency and because - on my part, at least - laziness). Also, I know when I GM'd regularly I could've made more use of negative/positive modifiers to enhance what people were posing. Sometimes I did, a lot of times I didn't, because of the simplicity/laziness. I definitely didn't do enough to nudge players about the options they had.

There was a battle recently on BSU where, because of the sheer size of it, the PCs used the 'teams' to represent different sections, and I liked it a lot. It felt like it made things more organized ICly as well as OOCly, and gave me a better handle on which Viper pilots I should be posing to/how to balance suppressing with my ECO (who was an NPC at that time) and weapon targeting. Was fun! Made me wanna do more stuff like that.

ETA: I think it is on the players to let the GM know if they want to do something extraordinary and call for a Piloting roll or something. Two way street! You're in control of a lot of your own fun. Also, don't whine if you fuck it or don't actually succeed at your awesome thing in a way that would much make difference.

@ThatGuyThere
That's how it works now, iirc. ECM suppression (and other kinds of suppression) fucks with the enemy's ability to hit things (I actually don't feel like the Raptors in series acted as spotters for the Vipers shots, but more as sonar/radar because they had more advanced detection systems and could sense things from farther away - once the target was THERE it was up to Lee and Starbuck to hit it - but this is getting into the weeds).

The GM can already add a positive modifier to someone's roll if they're doing something that seems to warrant it (or if something in general is going on that seems to warrant it), and you can take a round to aim (which also adds to your roll). Idk. There's a lot the +combat system is capable of right now, and it's up to the players involved to work cooperatively with the GM to utilize it (and for the GM to be on top of what's going on in action scenes and make appropriate limitations). It doesn't always get used. I'm somebody who usually likes to keep things simple, so I don't fuss to much with it, but the capability of fussing is there.

I also think if someone is doing something dumb-ass IC, they should become easier to hit, just like the enemies should. But I'm mean.

@Sparks said in Sparks' Playlist:

Added new alt because, dammit, the discussion else-thread about how dogfighting works on BSGU intrigued me enough to go pick up a character there.

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!!

@kitteh said in FS3:

Re Supress: Oh, I thought people were saying that when you had multiple people firing at at a target it was automatically causing some degree of suppression or whatever, outside of the specific action. I've seen the Raptor ECM thing, although I assumed that was Raptor specific.

Iirc you can suppress with any weapon. In a Viper or with a gun, you'd be adding 'covering' fire probably most ICly (not necessarily trying to hit the thing, but distract it/fire in its general area). Or however you want to pose it. One of the things I like about FS3 is that it's fairly simple in terms of feedback and I can pose what I'm doing with a degree of freedom. If you're expecting it to tell you (or the GM) exactly what to pose, I suspect we just want VERY different things out of our dicerolls.

ETA: Can the GM not grab a +combat/log anymore? That was useful as hell. I'm a fan! It should continue to be a thing!

@Auspice said in FS3:

There will be days you are Awesome. There will be days you are Not.
Check out Charlie's sheet sometime. Charlie should, arguably, be one of the best shots on the game re: firearms. She's meant to be. She's a sniper.
And then some of you saw how my dice treated me in that shooting competition. Even spending a luck point to reroll, she came out near the bottom. If I hadn't spent that luck point? She would've been the worst.

Stats are weird like this. On my deeply mediocre Raptor pilot, I'm chill as fuck during combat scenes. I hit things, it's a cool little surprise! I don't, whelp, I don't expect to most of the time, but I'm not too fussed about it. Meanwhile, on Arx right now I play a veteran combat tank, and dice rolls stress me like whoah, because I'm not supposed to suck. I have solid combat dice and usually don't, but those fails get in my brain. It's been interesting playing these characters at the same time, as they're both action-oriented, but the effect of their action scenes on me OOC is quite different.

I think a lot of what's being talked around in this thread comes down to player psychology, which you can't 'correct' mechanically.

@kitteh said in FS3:

OK, you're actually worse than me

Yes, I am. I'm playing somebody who was a civvie a year ago and used to fly cruise ships. Her stats are not uber. But. Calliope has Just OK stats and is the first Raptor pilot to make ace in the squadron, iirc. I show up and RP and have fun with her, which is why that is the case. I do not feel horrifically crippled. I'm telling the story I want to tell.

Also, I understand how the ruling attributes work and will totally own that she's optimized there, but that doesn't feel like twinking I need to guilt myself for too much.

My own experience with FS3 is that it's fairly forgiving of low skill levels in +combat (and that high skill levels tend not to be overwhelming - friends have whined at me because their 10s in version 2.0 didn't beat 6/7/8s all the time on opposed rolls. I was not a sympathetic audience for this whining).

This is a different issue than people who feel bad because they have Good as opposed to Excellent, or feel awesome because they have Excellent as opposed to Great. But I don't know that I care about those people. I understand that many people do care, though.

ETA: I guess I should add,for the BSU people, that I play Calliope there and she's statted to be pretty decent but not min-maxed, I don't think. She's Good in Piloting and Fair in Gunnery (with Exceptional Reflexes, admittedly, I DO think you can pretty easily fuck yourself over by misunderstanding ruling attributes. This is a good deal more important than skills imo), and she still manages to dodge pretty well and hit things an OK amount of the time in +combat.

@Booriley said in The 100: The Mush:

@Auspice @Three-Eyed-Crow On Witchcraft and Wizardry, if there was /no/ last will set, people got sent to the roster, so people could hopefully be picked back up by their original players if they returned.

This doesn't really make any sense. If the intention is for the original players to reclaim them, making them NPCs that are off-screened in unobtrusive ways is simpler. Putting characters up on a roster implies they're community property for anyone to take (it will usually not be the original player). And if that's what you're doing, OK, but that was not at all clear upfront and I as a player emphatically would have wanted something different to happen. It's over and done now, and in the grand scheme of things I'm not bent about it, I just wish I'd had a clear understanding of it and hope it's VERY clear now.