GM Lounge - Bartenders Answer All Your Questions

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TheGlyphstone


Thufir Hawat

Quote from: LunarSage on January 17, 2014, 07:57:01 PM
Human: the Boring

>.>
Quote from: TheGlyphstone on January 17, 2014, 08:21:34 PM
Mortals: The Statless Cannon Fodder, more like. ;D
Given that the question was about a mafia game, and no supernaturals were mentioned, I seriously question the usefulness of these two comments.

Granted, they might be accurate assessments for what mortals would be like in OWoD. But there are dozens of games out there just for the job, including the NWoD corebook, and I provided a link to a game that explicitly does mafia families.
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Chrystal

Thanks, Thufir. I was getting totally confused then because I have absolutely no idea what anyone was talking about....!

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TheGlyphstone

Quote from: Thufir Hawat on January 18, 2014, 03:03:19 AM
Given that the question was about a mafia game, and no supernaturals were mentioned, I seriously question the usefulness of these two comments.

Granted, they might be accurate assessments for what mortals would be like in OWoD. But there are dozens of games out there just for the job, including the NWoD corebook, and I provided a link to a game that explicitly does mafia families.

....he specifically said using the 'OWoD Mortals rules', TH. Our comments were very useful in that regards, since there are no published OWoD rules for mortals aside from their role as ineffectual bit extras in the various supers games. If he wants to play a mortals game, another ruleset will be needed, such as the Mafia game you mentioned.

Chrystal

Ahhh. Makes sense.And if it makes sense to me, it must make sense.

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I would rather watch a movie then have dinner than have dinner then watch a movie!

TheGlyphstone

And it's not like any of us should be surprised at random tangents drifting far longer than they need to. :D

Josietta

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on January 18, 2014, 07:04:55 AM
....he specifically said using the 'OWoD Mortals rules', TH. Our comments were very useful in that regards, since there are no published OWoD rules for mortals aside from their role as ineffectual bit extras in the various supers games. If he wants to play a mortals game, another ruleset will be needed, such as the Mafia game you mentioned.

I took them as jokes on the same fact that OWoD has no real rulebook for Mortals. >.> 


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LunarSage

Quote from: Thufir Hawat on January 18, 2014, 03:03:19 AM
Given that the question was about a mafia game, and no supernaturals were mentioned, I seriously question the usefulness of these two comments.

Granted, they might be accurate assessments for what mortals would be like in OWoD. But there are dozens of games out there just for the job, including the NWoD corebook, and I provided a link to a game that explicitly does mafia families.

Well, considering I wasn't actually responding to the mafia question and last I checked, posts on E are not required to be "useful"... I question why you felt the need to attack our comments.

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Chrystal

*chuckles*

I don't think he was "attacking" them. I think he was just pointing out that this is a thread for people to discuss all aspects of running a group game.

Personally my only issue with those comments was that I had no idea what you were talking about.

That said, if others were equally in the dark as to what those comments meant, it does to an extent justify TH's comment that they were not useful. Perhaps useful is the wrong word? Helpful might be better. This thread is, after all, about helping others who need it...

I'm not wanting to start a fight here, I'm just expressing my point of view.

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LunarSage

Got it.  No joking around at all in this thread.  Good to know.

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Chrystal

I didn't say that.

I think joking around is fine, just so long as people get the joke? I think the joke needs to be funny too... Probably in context those jokes were hilarious, I just didn't get them, because I have no idea what they were about.

I think, perhaps, we should have a rule that obscure jokes have an explanation under a spoiler tag...

*snigger*

Yes, I'm kidding about that last bit.

Please check out my latest A/A post.
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Ember Star

"One thing you who had secure or happy childhoods should understand about those of us who did not, we who control our feelings, who avoid conflicts at all costs or seem to seek them, who are hypersensitive, self-critical, compulsive, workaholic, and above all survivors, we're not that way from perversity. And we cannot just relax and let it go. We've learned to cope in ways you never had to." ~Author, Piers Anthony

Chrystal

Yeah, not quite sure what's going on, Emb.

I'm trying to smooth things over and making things worse, it seems?

Please check out my latest A/A post.
I would rather watch a movie then have dinner than have dinner then watch a movie!

TheGlyphstone


Chrystal


Please check out my latest A/A post.
I would rather watch a movie then have dinner than have dinner then watch a movie!

Ember Star

"One thing you who had secure or happy childhoods should understand about those of us who did not, we who control our feelings, who avoid conflicts at all costs or seem to seek them, who are hypersensitive, self-critical, compulsive, workaholic, and above all survivors, we're not that way from perversity. And we cannot just relax and let it go. We've learned to cope in ways you never had to." ~Author, Piers Anthony

Chrystal


Please check out my latest A/A post.
I would rather watch a movie then have dinner than have dinner then watch a movie!

Sahariel

#892
Quote from: TheGlyphstone on January 17, 2014, 05:24:10 PM
Anything is better than the rulebook for OWoD Mortals, because it doesn't exist. :D

Yeah, poorly phrasing on my part. To clarify: I am still considering GURPS or the OWoD ruleset for a game wherein all the pcs are mortals. I am not convinced that OWoD is the best system but I liked the emphasis on storytelling as opposed to mechanics.

LunarSage


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Thufir Hawat

Quote from: TheGlyphstone on January 18, 2014, 07:04:55 AM
....he specifically said using the 'OWoD Mortals rules', TH. Our comments were very useful in that regards, since there are no published OWoD rules for mortals aside from their role as ineffectual bit extras in the various supers games. If he wants to play a mortals game, another ruleset will be needed, such as the Mafia game you mentioned.
Yeah, but can't you take it that he has made a mistake? It might be mistaking N for O, or poor phrasing (and the latter turned out to be the case). And pointing it out is fine. A snowball of jokes on the expense of a minor mistake? I'm not so much on board with that.

Quote from: LunarSage on January 18, 2014, 10:01:53 AM
Well, considering I wasn't actually responding to the mafia question and last I checked, posts on E are not required to be "useful"... I question why you felt the need to attack our comments.
LunarSage, you of all people should remember that when I decide to attack someone's opinion, it looks much worse than that >:).
So yes, that wasn't an attack. It was, shall I say, disagreeing with the usefulness of your comments.

Quote from: Sahariel on January 18, 2014, 06:16:35 PM
Yeah, poorly phrasing on my part. To clarify: I am still considering GURPS or the OWoD ruleset for a game wherein all the pcs are mortals. I am not convinced that OWoD is the best system but I liked the emphasis on storytelling as opposed to mechanics.
The "opposition" is creating a false dichotomy where none is necessary, nor is it useful. You can have both, which means it's not a dichotomy at all.
Of course, if you don't want mechanics, you can play freeform. Playing with poor mechanics is the worst of both worlds, IME.
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Chrystal

#896
New subject...

I have a one-on-one idea called "Metal Venus". It's been in my ideas thread for a while, and was originally a 3-way. Unfortunately whenever anyone claims interest in it, they never take it any further than me explaining the story... Maybe they don't like the story, I don't know.

That is just background.

Today someone told me they liked the universe I'd created for the story, and thought it would make a great multi-player game...

So first of all here is the one-on-one idea:

Metal Venus, copied from my ideas thread
Metal Venus - Extreme, scifi. Cyber-steam-punk. Transformation.

Imagine the world of Steam Punk - a world where Babbage managed to get the difference engine to work, a world where the Victorians had the power of flight, where steam reigned supreme, where the British Empire was almighty. We've all played games and written stories in such a setting, right?

Now extrapolate that world forward through time, to the beginning of the 21st century.

If the Victorians had the technology we have now, what advances would we see in the intervening century?

There is a rail bridge across the Atlantic ocean, from Sierra Leone in Africa to Brazil in South America. Ships are steam and sail powered, There are three "beanstalks" - space elevators - sky-hooks! One in Ecuador, one in Kenya, and one in Indonesia. Monomolecular cables 25,000 miles long, leading up to geostationary space stations, with elevators riding up and down them in a journey that takes three days to get into orbit.

And there is a single world government. The world capital is in London, UK. The British Empire has successfully conquered the world. But it is no benevolent democracy. Instead it is a brutal dictatorship, ruling the world - indeed the solar system, with a fist of iron. Might iron-clad warships patrol the seas, coming up onto the land where needed and striding inland on massive mechanical legs. Armoured flying machines patrol the skies and the Empire's troops are clad in mechanical armoured suits.

That is not to say that there are no electronics - far from it, in fact electronics are more advanced than we have today. It's just that things developed in a different order and so everything looks and feels more mechanical.

And the entire solar system is under the thumb of the Evil Empire, from the penal colony on the dark side of Mercury to the Moon, to Mars, to Europa, Io and Ganymede, to Titan, Rhea and Iapetus, to Triton, Titania and Miranda, and out to the furthest outpost on Pluto.

Only Venus holds out. Venus, the most inhospitable world in the solar system (discounting the gas giants). The atmosphere of Venus is so corrosive that it will eat through virtually any substance entering it. Robot drones have survived for a while in the corrosive atmosphere, but only for a while. The temperature in the atmosphere will cook any living tissue, even if encased in a protective suit. Cooling systems only work for so long and they either run out of power or are corroded away by the atmosphere.

It is as if the Goddess of Love is holding her middle finger up at the empire of Hate.

But in the jungles of Peru, a brilliant but totally insane government scientist is working on a solution. For it, she needs two "volunteers".

You and I play two resistance fighters, rebels fighting for a lost cause. The Government is too powerful has technology on their side and much of the world's population is simply too complacent to see that they are totally without freedom. We try our best, often through carefully targeted acts of terrorism, to try and wake the people up to the reality, but it seems that our efforts are thwarted at almost every turn...

We have been sent by our resistance cell leader to Peru to investigate a newly discovered Government laboratory.

Unfortunately we get captured.

At this point, the fun starts. The mad scientist now has her two "volunteers". She has developed a means of transforming human flesh into metal, an alloy that is blended with a ceramic, and will resist the conditions on Venus. This metaloceramic already existed, but even robots made of it eventually succumbed, however if living tissue could be made of the material it would be self repairing and self regenerating...

And so, our two heroines start on their slow, painful journey...

I need a female player to play the other freedom fighter. We could do this as a three-way with the third player playing the mad scientist, but I'd rather not, because three-ways just don't seem to work.

(adding a note to this to say, I see the transformation process as being something like this:
H.R. Giger (Possibly nsfw)

So, there is a pretty vivid description of what I like to call a cyber-steam-punk setting.

Now, I agree that it would make a great setting for a group game. My biggest issue is, how?

With apologies to the various experts here, but quite simply I don't do system games. I have my reasons, the biggest reason being I don't have the time to real, learn and inwardly digest a rule book. If I'd been playing system for years, maybe, but I have never even participated in a system game. The closest I came to running one was the TV Game show RP I ran that used the dicebot to determine a random challenge.

So, while I'm sure there is a great system out there that would work it would likely need heavy modification, because the cyberpunk systems would need steampunk elements added and vice versa, and that is something I'm not even going to attempt to think about because it makes my brain hurt!

The obvious choice for me would be to do it freeform.

However, that leaves me with several issues:

1) I don't really want to use the one-on-one story idea, because someone, eventually, is going to want to write the story with me.

2) PvP in a freeform game is fine, but on a major scale it falls down mostly when people fail to post,  or more often right at the start when you get 10 people on one side and 2 on the other! Plus, to be honest, the fight would be rather one sided...

3) I can see only one scenario that works: a MacGuffin hunt.

Basically the players are all on the same side. They are a band of resistance fighters who must destroy something, find something, kill someone, blow something up... all while evading capture (and preferably evading detection) by the world government.

My character in this would actually be The World Leader - in other words, I would play all the bad guys, and make sure that the good guys stayed on their toes.

What do people think? Is it workable? If people think it's doable, I will ask the guy who suggested it to Co-GM with me.

Any suggestions would be well received. If someone has a system that doesn't have a huge rule-book to read, I'll think on it, but I think I'm allergic to system games...

My other option is of course the sandbox, but I still see it really as being only playable with a limited range of character types, and thus it would end up a a MacGuffin hunt anyway....

For those saying "a Mac-what hunt?"

A Macguffin is a valuable object, person, place or thing, it is the item around which the plot revolves. In The Maltese falcon, it is the Maltese falcon. In Raiders of the Lost Arc, it is the Arc of the Covenant. In Sister Act, Whoopie Goldburg's character Deloris Van Cartier is the MacGuffin. In Lord Of The Rings, it's the One Ring, in Star Wars Ep Iv A New hope, it's the Death Star. in Logan's Run, Sanctuary is the MacGuffin.

The point is that a MacGuffin can be a person, place or thing. The hunt for it doesn't necessarily involve searching for something. It could in fact be the opposite - getting rid of something. The term "MacGuffin Hunt" is generic and is synonymous with a quest

Thoughts, please?

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Ember Star

Can't really help you. I don't do systems at all. Don't like them. I was trained on PvP freeform with nothing more than stats being the only thing occasionally used. Systems take the fun out of action games to me.

THAT being said. A possible option could be negating a system and using a freefrom with stats instead.
"One thing you who had secure or happy childhoods should understand about those of us who did not, we who control our feelings, who avoid conflicts at all costs or seem to seek them, who are hypersensitive, self-critical, compulsive, workaholic, and above all survivors, we're not that way from perversity. And we cannot just relax and let it go. We've learned to cope in ways you never had to." ~Author, Piers Anthony

Chrystal

Quote from: Ember Star on January 21, 2014, 02:06:11 PM
Can't really help you. I don't do systems at all. Don't like them. I was trained on PvP freeform with nothing more than stats being the only thing occasionally used. Systems take the fun out of action games to me.

THAT being said. A possible option could be negating a system and using a freefrom with stats instead.

Actually, Emb, you mist the point.

I don't do system games either. You are actually in the perfect position to help, because you can tell me if you think it has a hope in hell of working as a freeform game?

Please check out my latest A/A post.
I would rather watch a movie then have dinner than have dinner then watch a movie!

Ember Star

Okay. Well, basically you have to think of it in terms of a video game. You have a few basics that determine a characters strengths and weaknesses. Say; magic, speed, defense, and attack.

With 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest, a Mage might look like this;

M: 10
S: 5
D: 4
A: 6

A Knight might look like -

M: 1
S: 5
D: 9
A: 8

And a thief might be -

M: 1
S: 9
D: 5
A: 5

Those are just loose examples. But it gives each character limits. A thief has a better chance of fleeing. A Knight has a better chance of withstanding a hit and making a hard one. A Mage can't withstand a hard hit but can do big damage (or heal) with magic.

You also add in "slots" for certain things per character. Say a beginning Mage might have two spell slots and able to use each of those spells only five times. A archer might have a bow and arrows but can only carry 10 arrows at a time.

With those limits set, it then goes to freeform with player and GM judgment so somebody doesn't have their mage lay down a heavy melee attach and likewise the Knight doesn't started throwing spells around.
"One thing you who had secure or happy childhoods should understand about those of us who did not, we who control our feelings, who avoid conflicts at all costs or seem to seek them, who are hypersensitive, self-critical, compulsive, workaholic, and above all survivors, we're not that way from perversity. And we cannot just relax and let it go. We've learned to cope in ways you never had to." ~Author, Piers Anthony