Posts made by Warma Sheen

I used to be a player there. Whoever is headstaff there now (not sure if that's you or not - I forget names) have their own characters rolling roughshod over every sphere. If you buddy up to them, things are great. If you go against them staff requests hit brick wall after brick wall. Its just not fun to have to deal with that. You can't win. You won't win.

I know it isn't the first place that has had that problem with Headstaff, and most of us here are familiar with the experience, but this game didn't used to be like that. It had its problems, sure - not the least of which is the twinktastical SAGA system, but you could find ways around it and still have fun. But in the current iteration of the game, you can't avoid the influence of one of Headstaff's 5-6 characters no matter where you are or where you go unless you app in with your own group and isolate yourself from everyone else in the game.

A yearly Star Wars movie has done well to boost interest. But at the end of the day if you want to do anything remotely important in the game its still dealing with overpowering Headstaff-alts all day every day.

IMHO, one big problem with the concept of a social gaming system is that it often is interpreted by people who aren't very good socially.

No one ever socially forces anyone to do anything they don't want to do. Social interaction just doesn't work like that. And they are far more complex than any physical confrontation. Even Intimidation is just a way to imply physical force that is possible. Socially, people make the decision to risk that physical violence or not.

But just as an actual fight is nowhere near as simple as combat mechanics are, social mechanics are not a simulacrum of real life. Dice just help give twists and turns and determine outcomes that would be otherwise arbitrary. So don't look at social systems so seriously and you find ones that work just fine.

At our tabletop, we use WoD social system that is just like the combat system. Attack = Attr (Presence or Manipulation) + Skill - Defense (just like a physical attack). Defense is equal to lower of Presence or Manipulation + Socialize (just like physical defense). "Health levels" are equal to Willpower points (not dots) + Resistance traits. Done. By the time a pose is typed up, rolling the Att + skill that goes along with adds only a few seconds to the posing time. And not everything is a mental deathmatch. Unlike the mindless mooks we all fight in our games who have no self-preservation and continue every encounter to the death, when someone feels uncomfortable around another person socially, that person usually removes themselves from the situation. And then that situation is resolved. Simple enough. Or they can just not engage with them. If you ignore someone, they can't do much influencing. Trying sometimes just makes things worse.

And I agree that players are the problem, not the systems. Some players just don't understand the limits of the social boundaries. Or more accurately, don't want those boundaries to limit them from doing as they please.

If only we could all remember that it is just a game, everyone could have so much more fun.

@A.-Meowley said in Sin City Chronicles:

@tragedyjones said in Sin City Chronicles:

Re: Changeling.

There will not be a "and then suddenly, faeries" type situation.

Awww, but that worked so well for True Blood.

(/s, obviously.)

Hey, it isn't True Blood's fault that WoD blew past the release date for Changeling then Anna Paquin applied to have her character retroactively be faeblooded. These things just happen and you adjust as best you can.

By adding werewolves.

Since this is an apology thread...

I'm sorry that all spheres aren't power balanced equally. And I'm sorry some people have the expectation that it should be, despite numerous editions of the same game lines where they absolutely, and continuously, do not try to balance one sphere's powers against all the other spheres' powers.

And I'm sorry that despite plenty of people jumping in on multisphere games to be mages where they can lord their infiinite might over others, that people find them rather boring when they are placed in a game all on their own.

Oh god! I'm so sorry! -sobs -

@The-Tree-of-Woe said in What's the new hotness?:

The thing that's out of balance about the game to me is the pledges. Being able to add stuff to people's sheets that don't cost XP for drawbacks that will almost certainly never come up unless an ST or player forces the issue was, to me, a terrible concept in game design. And then Demon turned around and did Pledges Part Deux.

Something, something, something... works great in tabletop with an ST that knows your characters and is running a game catered to them... something, something, something... not made for a MU*... something, something, something... all splats are not created equal.

I play because I can't roleplay elsewhere. I mean, I probably can, but its a whole lot of effort and I'm not sure the results would merit it. But this has been my outlet for RP for a long while. But if I could go back to having a regular group of friends to RP with, I would. Unfortunately, life hit is all. Jobs and different schedules and relationships and such.

As far as what I get out of it, mostly wish fulfillment. I like doing things I wouldn't be able to do in RL (which is why I hate casual bar/coffee shop scenes). Give me some powers, give me some agenda to fulfill and let me start working out some problems. That makes me happy.

Unfortunately, I've found the MU* community only scratches the itch barely and I wish there were more games with more people that played like I like to. Instead I feel the constant need to tiptoe around people's feelings so they don't dramasplode on me, and I have to do it both ICly and OOCly and that's a whole lot of emotionally draining effort that I'd prefer to not have to spend. But this is what I got available to me so I make it work. Sometimes.

@Jennkryst There's no XP cap anymore. They got rid of that shortly after the time people started hitting it. There's a limit on how much free/auto xp you get. But that's not really the same thing.
@derp What custom stuff? The only thing that might be considered custom is that they allowed/converted some 1st edition merits for use in the game. And do you really want to have PCs v PCs at war? And the number of scenes where people are charging headfirst into a battle with Seers has been like... 3 maybe. It seems like maybe you got caught up into someone's rabble rousing ICly even though things don't really go down like that. And if they do, it is few and far between. The "war" is mostly negotiating, looking for allies, finding objects and info that could help against the Seers, that kind of thing. Straight up fights are rare. So there's a little something for everyone.

@Arkandel I never found that to be the case at all. Or anywhere close. People are always gonna do their stuff in private rooms (I'm guess), but grid public stuff was very much away from that.
What I found was very little effort to do anything in the game besides show up to +events. Like resolving aspirations. I rarely saw anyone work towards those, but the same people would complain about the slow gain of free xp. Made no sense.
I mean the system in place is you make up your own scene conditions, you have a scene about those conditions, you get xp. And yet for some (many) that is too much work.

Supposedly rp, investigate and explore and get into side adventures, but numbers are really low so it is usually just +events that happen until more people show up and participate. The game itself is good. People just aren't into it for some reason. Some just don't like Mage or this edition in particular.

@faraday said in Where's your RP at?:

I MU* because I love to interact with other people. Stories evolve in surprising ways. I don't mind when bad things happen to my character - actually in most cases I welcome it because RPing complications is fun. I just don't want to lose my character against my will. I don't understand why that's so hard to understand when various people have laid out very concrete reasons why they don't like it.

Maybe 'understand' is the wrong word. I acknowledge the reasons given, your own included. But I can't reconcile the explanations given. For example, how you can say that you welcome when bad things happen to your character without consent, unless it is death? I can't get why that's an exception to the rule. Character death is just another bad thing that can happen to your character. If someone turned your character into a rock, would that be okay? Kept alive and healthy, but imprisoned? Cut off his arms and legs in a genre where you survived, but they couldn't be regrown, is that okay? Blinded and made mute? If death is the only exception, I don't know why it is not okay but everything else is. If it isn't the only exception, how much of a change to your character is acceptable and why is that the line that can't be crossed.

This isn't meant as a knock against you or anyone else. It is more a statement of my own inability to grasp these types of point of views. That's all.

@Sunny Your statement then asks the question as to what is a 'stupid death' and what is not, which is yet another debate.

@Ganymede Yeah, the staff should try to set the tone and which theme they want to keep versus which they want to throw out, but when you pick a game line to base your game off of, a lot of different interpretations are going to come with it . So yeah, being crystal clear is pretty much an impossibility, especially considering how many people have their preconceived notions of how things should be in WoD and what they are used to playing on other games, which for some people, for some reason, seem to have a big bearing on what they do in someone else's WoD game.

Character death by bad die roll. I've never seen that happen.

Mostly because I'm not purposefully narrowing my focus to create sympathy and avoid responsibility for personal choices.

I'm not saying it doesn't happen. But it probably happens far less than people make it out to be. A character's death usually has far more involved than one single bad die roll, but because that's where things end, they blame it on that.

Its like when someone misses a field goal in the final seconds of a football game and the loss gets blamed on him, regardless of how easy it should have been. There were still 60 minutes of football in which plays and decisions were made which all led up to that point. Same with characters. Did you min max your sheet and spend all your XPs making a glass cannon, then fail some defense or resistance roll badly? That's not dying from a crappy roll. Everything you did from CG until then is what led to your character's death, which ended with a crappy roll. Your character, most of the time, puts themselves into situations or makes decisions which leads to being in a situation where they die due in part to a crappy roll. But not only is crappy rolls part of the system you're using, your choices and decisions and actions got you to that point. That's your character's story, whether you want to ignore it and only focus on the parts you like or not.

Sure, everyone has their own idea and preferences for story, but I don't understand how anyone can come onto a medium with this many other contributors and still expect to have full control over everything that happens to their character. I know that mindset exists. I'm not putting it down. All I'm saying is that I can't understand it.

I'm really surprised, actually that anyone cares about MU*s in any official capacity. That astounds my brain considering how few people are involved with any particular game.

Count me in on that as well. He's the person that got me over the hump to not shun Mage completely. Now, its one of my favorite game lines.

Grey's Anatomy of Darkness: A Vampire Game/Menu

I believe it was The Reach where we did something similar and played a D&D game ICly, then some crazy magic-fu happened and in our dreams we got trapped together and became the characters we were playing. It was fun.

I don't like people on my game reminded that there are other options out there. They are much easier to beat into submission if they are convinced that this is the only place they could reasonably expect to have funtimes, no matter how unfun those times may be.

@Ganymede said in Fires of Hope: A Star Wars Story:

@Warma-Sheen said in Fires of Hope: A Star Wars Story:

This is the problem with Saga. If everyone starts at 4 and you have force users with SF: UtF, force users are OP. But if you don't allow SF:UtF, they're easy targets. And the higher levels you go, the worse UtF will scale.

So, how exactly are Force Users OP'd in SAGA? I want to understand a contrary perspective.

In early levels with SF: UtF, their skill rolls easily blow through similarly leveled opponents defenses easily. And at later levels it can't keep up.

Edit: Yeah, what @Seraphim73 said... Lag.

But you are right about the skills. Its just that no one ever bothers to use those enough to matter. Its mostly laziness on the scene runner's part. Or the fear of PCs failing. Couldn't tell you the last time I saw a scene where PCs just failed. If skill checks were used to greater effect it would limit the effectiveness of Jedis greatly.

This is the problem with Saga. If everyone starts at 4 and you have force users with SF: UtF, force users are OP. But if you don't allow SF:UtF, they're easy targets. And the higher levels you go, the worse UtF will scale. I was so excited about a different SW game, too. SO frustrating.

@Thenomain That's a weird picture angle. I can't even see the whole Winnebago. Show that thing off!