It bugs me a bit more when it comes to vapers because those motherfuckers think they're the cock of the walk for engaging in a behavior that is likely just as damaging to others [...]
[citation needed]
I'm not saying I don't believe you. I'm saying I don't have very much information on this and would like to see some more. What little I do have says vaping is far less harmful to both the user and the user's environment than is smoking, but … studies can be bought.
This is one of those rare cases where I wish we could downvote … and not to be mean.
@fatefan said in Poll: RPG System for OC Hero Game:
@ZombieGenesis As someone who's played a bit of but not run Savage Worlds, what are the barriers for new players you're identifying with that system?
I can't answer for @ZombieGenesis, but I can answer for me.
I really wanted to like Savage Worlds. A lot of people whose opinions I (used to) respect sang hymns to it. They wrote long odes of praise of it. So when I went to Canada I spent the (to me) absurd amounts of my limited Canadian money to snag a copy of Savage Worlds Deluxe: Explorer's Edition.
To say I was underwhelmed would be a criminal offense of understatement. I was strongly disappointed (and it caused me to reevaluate the opinions of people whose taste I used to trust). I just cannot see what the fuss is over this game. It's a fairly simplistic game, but it isn't a simple one. And it is further so badly written that even though it may not be the most complicated game out there, it's incredibly hard to actually get into.
First the simplistic complexity: This is another one of those games where the rules are hidden within descriptions of other things. For example, environmental rules. What is the impact of wet conditions? Can you find that in the GM section under running the game? Nope. Maybe it's under situational rules? Not really, except possibly for the drowning rules. Oh, wait! I found something about wet conditions in the climbing rules! I see! That's elegant! Don't look under "wet conditions", look under the action you're trying to attempt! What about driving? … FUCK! No, that's not in the skill description, that's in its own section 90 pages after the driving skill. Or is it in the chase rules 80 pages afterwards?…
Everything in the rules is this way. Terms are used before definition. And this can be acceptable. (They do this in Fate Core as well sometimes.) But it only works if you PROPERLY CROSS-REFERENCE these things. Which Fate Core did, but Savage Worlds didn't.
And anyway, this is all beside the point. If the system were more coherent, there'd be a set of standard modifiers and the explanations of situations and conditions would reference these without being absolutely necessary. A coherent system lets you apply on-the-fly judgement with simplicity. There is no such coherence in the Savage Worlds game system. A decent bonus/penalty is an adjustment by 2, and you see that all sorts of places. Except where you don't. Where different adjustments are used because reasons.
Here's an interesting challenge. Take someone who is an experienced role-player. Hand them the Savage Worlds rules book. Tell them to make a character. Any character. DO NOT HELP THEM WITH IT. See how long it takes them to correctly make a character. (The key word there is "correctly". There's a few pitfalls along the way caused by unclear writing and poor organization.)
What are some of the pitfalls? Well it took me ages to finally figure out what "novice" and "seasoned" and such meant in picking up edges. I mean hey, those words are used everywhere. Surely they're in the index? Nope. Well surely they're defined before first point of use? Nope. They're defined after all the edges in the advancement rules.
And that only masks the fact that edges themselves aren't really defined in a read-through of how to make a character, nor are they cross-referenced properly so you can flip forward quickly while making your character.
(Oh, for bonus marks, try and figure out how to make the Archetypes using the actual rules for making characters. Hint: as far as I can tell this is not possible. The Archetypes aren't possible in the rules. But I may be wrong; I may have missed some obscure piece buried in the section on finding lost dog bones or soemthing.)
So, let's say you read the game word for word, cover to cover. Then you read it again so you understand the rules. What do you get? You get a game that's ... nothing special. It's miniatures-focused and they SO DESPERATELY want to sell you on more things: world books, special card decks, miniatures, templates, etc. (It's a bit off-putting, that.) But the core system is a routine roll a die against a target number. The schtick is that the die type changes, as do the numbers you add or subtract to the result, but the target number is the same. Oh, and you have the "wild die" which serves mainly to make it hard to judge the odds. Oh, and you have "bennies" (which in inimitable fashion are referenced a dozen times before being described ... and then in their description refer to other undefined things; yes I'm harping on this!). It's just not that great a game system. It's OK. I mean it's not a terrible system. I've seen many worse ones. I just don't get the hype in some circles.
And that's the reason it went from "bleah" to "yuck" for me: the hype. In certain fan circles SW is the Second Coming of Gaming. I spent too much of my own, rare, Canadian currency to get a copy. And it was nothing special that was compounded by being badly written nothing special.
That being said, I love a lot of the world books. I just won't be using Savage Worlds itself with them.
Ah, shit.
Well, afford him my best wishes.
I can see how FS3 would suit a game that's oriented toward battles and, in particular, large battles. For that, I would likely withdraw any objections I have to FS3. Thing is, the games I've seen it used in weren't oriented to large battles.
@Seraphim73 It's combats in particular that had people throwing up their hands and giving up in games that I tried. For a "rules light" system it has a whole metric fuckton of shit to deal with (http://aresmush.com/fs3/fs3-3/combat/ cites: attack, aim, suppress, reload, subdue, escape, rally, treat, and pass) that nobody wanted to deal with in a simple combat--especially given that most of the things people wanted to do seemed to always fall into the "pass and resolve manually" column. And that's just the possible actions. It doesn't cover things like stances, hit locations, cover, armour, individual wound tracking, knockouts, healing, etc.
I mean the system has a COMBAT HUD for crying out loud!
And note in the combat HUD the section for vehicles? Note how in the rules I linked for combat there's nothing mentioned about vehicles? In fact there's a whole bunch of stuff in the combat rules section that turn out to be in the actual system when you look over the commands for running a combat. And they're largely undocumented (like vehicles).
I'm serious about how in literally every game I've tried that used some version of FS3 or another people just stopped using the game system until forced to by staff plots.
@faraday said in Suitable system for a gritty fantasy game:
@WTFE said in Suitable system for a gritty fantasy game:
@Bobotron said in Suitable system for a gritty fantasy game:
@fatefan
I recall hearing that FS3 doesn't really do anything but scifi and modern very well without serious tweaking.And it doesn't do those particularly well either.
Gee thanks.
Every time I've been on a game that uses FS3 (that's about a half-dozen by now), people have tried the system, right down to in one case staff having a set of LESSONS in how to use it. And in every case--no exceptions--it was deemed so unusable by most of the players that when staff wasn't running scenes (and thus forcing the issue) the players fell back to some variant on "roll a die, whoever rolls highest determines outcome" and then just posed accordingly. I would not call this a resounding success for the system.
Maybe it works well on your game. I have no idea. I've never logged on to find out. It hasn't worked on any other game I've seen it applied to and, in fact, it is now a mark against a game when I evaluate "do I want to play here?".
So, if you want me off your game, @fatefan, just use FS3! 
@Bobotron said in Suitable system for a gritty fantasy game:
@fatefan
I recall hearing that FS3 doesn't really do anything but scifi and modern very well without serious tweaking.
And it doesn't do those particularly well either.
@Thenomain said in Are there any MU* RP log repositories out there?:
I don't know of a repository for every log on every game that anyone cares to upload about. I think that'd be a little crazy.
QFT except s/little/lot/.
@Wizz said in What MU*s do right:
If you're going to ask for [backgrounds] on a game, do it because you genuinely enjoy reading other people's work and want to help them improve their craft, not because it's just a Thing Games Do.
Quoted for truth.
I honestly haven't had this much fun on a MUSH in ages!
United Heroes has managed to take a genre I'm usually a poor fit for and give me more laugh-out-loud fun RP in the past couple of weeks than I've had in the couple of months before it. Some of the things it gets VERY right are:
And thing is, once that seed is planted it's very hard to weed.
I've been there before: great job, great boss, but something happens that makes you doubt the place and … well, I was young and stupid at the time (as opposed to old and stupid, but a bit experienced) and I stuck around past my time. I could have left the job on good terms and instead left the job bitter enemies with one of the bosses.
Don't consider. Effect it. At the very least get your ducks in a row, cross your "i"s, dot your "t"s and be ready to evacuate on short notice. Don't just think about it. Get the process started.
If you can weed that sprout of discontent you've got growing there, no harm, no foul. If not, you're ready to walk on your terms instead of theirs.
@Cupcake Forgive the impertinence, but ... why aren't you saying "fuck it" and walking out the door? (Or, rather, why aren't you working your exit plan now so you can put yourself into a position to say "fuck it" yadda yadda yadda?)
Play with Cobaltasaurus (yay!) on Arx! Right alongside Custodius (boo!)!
Talk about mixed blessings.
@Bobotron Indeed. Each is the title of one of the songs, has a work of art seemingly related to the song, and even has the title in English (in very small type).
Saturday my son makes me proud and on Monday I get the fruits of being a (bush league) patron of the arts.
This is my third crowd-funding backing on Modian (a sort of Chinese Kickstarter but for creative projects only) and my first that's directly related to the arts. So far I've not even been mildly disappointed by the projects I've backed, but this one blew me away with its professional production. (The music is good too but probably not to anybody's tastes here.)
I started off with some handle lost to the mists of time. Peverel used "Canink" as a slur, so I switched to that in a later incarnation. Then there was the meltdown of the co-runner of the board where he deleted accounts and messages from people who he thought were his enemies (thus guaranteeing that at least this particular one who didn't give much of a shit either way become one) and I made a replacement account because the idiot site admin (Peverel again) didn't know about things called "backups" and everything was lost. This replacement account was supposed to be called "What The Fuck Ever" but someone else already had it, so I initialized it. I've stuck with it ever since.
