Collected Cleaning

[heiligekuh]

I spent yesterday tidying the house and cursing Cory Doctorow. I occasionally make declarations, broad declarations that I will never follow, like "I will no longer read near future SF because it makes me too jealous." In Eastern Standard Tribe i could have cleaned the house just the same, but chorded out the three LJ rants one handed. usernamenumber mentioned meeting someone at a LinuxWorld who actually lived like a gargoyle, so maybe there's some solace to take from the near in near future. but, until I have an LED implanted in my skull, ugh. No more. Only 16th century SF from now on.

One major frustration was stupid proprietary connectors. My new thesis is that if you use a non-standard connector on any device without a strong and defensible reason for it, the phrases "interoperability" and "standards based" must be barred from your marketing literature for a period no less than one year. Maybe this iMac is old enough that Apple would be allowed to use that phrase again..but I know that they were spouting that garbage all over the MacWorld 2001 when they introduced these flat panel beasts, complete with the non-standard SO-DIMM slot. and it's stupid non-standard to boot. The notch is a different place. Congrats apple, you've extracted another needles $100 from me. I would have blown hat cash in the Apple store anyway, and likely more, but the frustration of having to drive to the mall to replace mail order RAM set me off your sexy products for a few weeks.
The second offender was kodak, who either uses a really bizarre version of USB A-miniB to connect their camera docks, or uses the standard and I just happen to own 3 other, proprietary USB A-whothefuckknows cables which look like they should fit but don't. So, possible fuckyou! to Kodak or to the rest of the electronics world.

Finally, a pair of questions for my still burgeoning Buffy RPG, which I now know that kielle will probably have an opinion on. Is it safe to conclude from the Riley break-up cycle that being sucked-but-not-drained by a vamp has a will-corrosive effect? That, despite intentions, on the human end, exchanging fluids with a vamp makes them more pliable either to suggestion or coercion?
Second, is there a sweet spot for the granularity of actions in a story based RPG? When playing with...oh, ever D&D group I've ever known, the pretense hat we're involved in a Role Playing game breaks down anytime players have contested actions. The scope of what a player can do on a "turn" is so miniscule and broken down into so many dependent stages, most of which have their own rolls or checks, that any creative become spectacularly inefficient. So it seems that the more a player can do with one declared action (and then one combined skill check) the better for the flow of creative and inventive play. Having the half-orc decide to rush the chasm, leap across and tackle the foes on the other side should be *a* action requiring *a* roll and *a* chance to fail, not 4 or 5. but there must be some lower bound, where all contest actions are lumped together and offer no excitement whatsoever. Some dreary "There's bad guys." "We fight." "Roll." "+3" "You win." I'm sure hatwill come out in play testing.

Ok, off to So Cal and the Merritt opera. Notes upon return. Call jodi this week, she could probably use a non-paternal voice.

Comments

Italics-o-rama

[jeliaser.livejournal.com]

I have no idea how to answer either of your questions. I always thought that with Riley, though, the corruption/sadness came first, then the bloodletting. I have a question of my own, though. How and when is the DM to determine which of the characters in the party is to turn evil? Should the DM tell that player way in the beginning, and both of them keep it like a secret throughout? Does the character become a NPC after turning evil? How does his/her/its stats change? Does it have to happen in every campaign? (I suspect the answer to the last question is yes.)

Re: Italics-o-rama

[heiligekuh.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'll go fix that tag. I was typing that this mornign as I headed out the door.

There are a number of good ways to have charachters on private arcs that the rest of the party doesn't know about, wether it's "turning evil" or something more mundane (developing a crush, coming out, whatever). All it requires is that there is some player/DM communication away from the table. While in play, the DM and the player can pass notes (or something) in order to ask/answer any questions that aren't appropriate for public consumption.

Yeah, in thinking about this in teh airport, I decided that the blodletting wasn't quite enough for my story purposes, but it makes a neat hook. At this point I'm really starting to feel like i have enough to make this season work. 3 or 4 sand alone episodes. One fall down funny concept that should be a blast to play. A good set of reccuring villans and a huge ethical delimma. And, you know, things to kill.

Since you're listening, what does a game need in terms of stat advancement? I've arrived at a system that I'm pretty happy with in terms of charachter creation and skill assignment, but I haven't given any thought to advancement. Except that I don't want monsters to have point values. And that you shouldn't be able to gain or advance something that you haven't used in session.

Re: Italics-o-rama

[jeliaser.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've been a part of the whole secret thing before, and it works plenty fine, but I really just wanted to draw attention to what I've taken to calling the "Joss Dilemma" even though he certainly didn't invent it, he just can't seem to avoid it. I think Anya said at one point during the last season, "Do you have a friend you haven't tried to kill?" Or something.

I've always hated stat/level advancement. I mean, a Slayer's a Slayer, right? They come with the bad-ass they got, what more do you need? What, I picked one stinking lock and now I'm 50% better at it? But, now thinking about it, it makes more sense than a lot of gaming conventions (certainly more than THAC0), because of course you get better at something with practice. I mean, all those training sessions with Giles must've done some good, right? And Willow went from Dumb-Witch to Awesomest-Witch-Ever in just a few seasons. So, I guess it happens. But I still say that if it's in the game at all it happen slowly, and in such a way that discourages people from trying do stuff that will make them level on purpose. That's just dumb.

Re: Italics-o-rama

[heiligekuh.livejournal.com]

Agreed. EverQuest level dumb.

There's two models of skill increase that we see on BtVS. The first is a gradual, season-long plotline form of growth. It's a bit inconsistent, seeing as magic in the Buffyverse isn't established beyond what happens in each episode. But, in general, Willow/Tara get stronger the more they practice and work together. Buffy gets stronger, learns moves and generally kicks more ass.
The second is the gift model, and it's even flakier. Xander gets military knowledge from a one episode gift, but only appears when convienent for the plot.
The first of those I see as being a good even split between GM and player control. A player can discuss witha GM their desire to...become a better blood sucking fiend, or whatever. Then, after an episode or three the GM can decide that there may be enough progress to adjust something stat wise.
I like the chunky granularity in the FUDGE system, in part because it doesn't leave a lot of room for advancement. There are 7 ransk for everything in FUDGE

Terrible
Poor
Mediocre
Fair
Good
Great
Superb

So, if your charachter starts out as a Good Swordsman, raising to a Great Swordsman is HUGE. That's not a weeks worth of practice. I think that a few sessions of play and seeing how the system work would clue players into that.
Secondly, I'm now set on using subjective charachter creation. Which means no rolls, no random statss. You have a charachter concept? Good. Write it out. Two paragraphs, three pages, whatever. Then we sit down and assign ransk to each skill set that is identified in your write up. Not random ranks, but ranks that come closest to describing the concept. Is your charachter fantasticaly dexterous? Nice to know. Is she Olympic gymnast level, becuase that would be Superb. A bit lower than that? Ok, we'll call that Great. Oh, she's full-body coordinated but hand clumsy? We'll just had "manual dextarity: Fair" and call it a day.

AS to the Joss-Dillema, I'd wager that it's better to have a villian you care about, even if it's only for an episode, than a beastie of the week.

Re: Italics-o-rama

[jeliaser.livejournal.com]

I like it. I like it mostly because it doesn't give some stupid calculus that turns the DM into a robot. If I wanted to take out the human element, I'd play the video game. The DM can keep his own notes, and decide in his own way when it's time. It's also skill-specific. I always hated that when you got enough points, you got better at everything, even the stuff you never practiced. You pick a lot a locks, you get better at picking locks. It makes sense. It's not great for an uncreative 13-year-old-fanboy DM, for whom the more arithmetic the better, but it's perfect for, say, us.

I also like the subjective character creation. But I'm concerned it won't be standardized enough. I mean, there has to be some base level for some things, right? I mean, do I get to have a much badder-assed slayer than everybody else just because I sold it to the DM better? I'm not sure if that's fair or not (it could be, I mean, this is all about being creative, right?) "Before she became a Slayer, my character had a PHD, was a gold medal gymnast, and a black belt in seven martial arts." "Umm . . . no." Plus, I think it's important that every character have its weakness. You should maybe think of some standardized questions, like an interviewer would. "What's your best quality? Your worst? What makes you the best candidate for this position?"

Have you read Fray? It's pretty okay, but one thing it made clear that I had never heard about before was that in addition to her other superpowers, The Slayer also has the innate talent of leadership. People are drawn to her in a preternatural fashion, think Joan of Arc. I think it's an important Slayer-characteristic to take into account, and it explains a lot about Buffy, especially the last season. "No matter how stupid the decisions you make seem, I'm behind you all the way!"

Okay, now I officially have more questions than can possibly be addressed here. We need to meet. What are you doing next weekend?

Re: Italics-o-rama

[heiligekuh.livejournal.com]

Yea!
Next weekend, Jodi and I are seeing an opera in LA at the new Disney Center (The Peach Blossom Fan, music by Stephin Merritt) and flying back into town on Saturday afternoon/evening. We're both on spring break this week, which is why I'm posting all of this from an AOL connection in OC. Gah.

I just downloaded and am reading a neat implementationof the FUDGE system called FATE. The file is here, on the sidebar, at faterpg.com. But their version of subjective charachter creation uses "phases." basically, you get to have X number of skill ranks per period in your life before now. So, if you were a 250 year old vampire, charachter creation would consist of, say, 5 50-year phases where you can say "I was fighting (relectantly) for the US government, breaking into submarines and buying a ufckload of t-shirts." Al right, assign the skills you learned durign that phase. What next? "Uhh, I lived off rats for a few decades." Best be boosting your scroungin' skill then. It's a neat idea. One benefit of that is each campaign the players run can be seen as a phase, and then have the same ammount of advancement *based on what they did.*

One other tweak which I didn't mention before and have been playing with in my Buffy notebooks, is the idea of pair or team skills. So much of BtVS/Angel is about creating new famalies and partnerships that give all members strength that it seems sensible that there hsould b some system that recognizes that. certianly I think that Xander is a far mroe competent fighter when in a group with Anya and Willow than when he's on his own. Fightin' : Group perhaps?

So, if not next Sunday, then the weekend after. What are your plans for Memorial Day, by the by.