|
Zorak of Michigan posted:I sometimes benefited from this sort of thing but I never quite thought it was fair. It often gets applied to the benefit of charismatic people being charismatic, but rarely to horribly unlikeable neckbeards being horribly unlikeable, and of course it can't be applied to combat. In the end, people who the GM thinks are socially adept and play to that end up getting a lot of positive modifiers not available to people who the GM decides are annoying or tedious. In principle I think an annoying player whose character has high social skills/traits/attributes ought to have exactly the same chances of charming the NPC as the charming player with the same character, and a better chance than the charming player whose character has poor social skills.
|
#
?
Nov 7, 2015 22:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 21:18 |
|
|
Yawgmoth posted:I am so incredibly okay with rewarding people for being genuinely likable people and also for punishing people who are insufferable. Same
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2015 00:02
|
|
|
I've GM'd for people who are socially adept and those who are not, and my general policy has always been "If you describe what you're doing/role play/try to stunt in any way that shows you are having fun and paying attention, you get a small bonus." Be it socializing, combat, sneaking, whatever. I don't care if it's a good description or a bad one, a good speech or a lovely one, as long as you're engaged with the fiction. It also serves as a handy barometer of player engagement- if no one is taking advantage, I know I need to rethink where the adventure is at.
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2015 15:02
|
|
|
So I've been trying out gaming with a new group for about the past month. (The only group I can find in my area.) The GM is kind of railroady, it's a 3E game, and everyone is baked as poo poo constantly, but it wasn't exactly bad per se... until last week. See, there's this one guy. You all know this guy, he seems to appear in every game. Anyway, he would occasionally mention offhand the time in a previous game where another player's character got raped, like it was a joke. (Of course the other player is female.) But hey, just because one other player is a prick doesn't mean the game is a wash, right? Well, last week, he brought the story up again, this time during some downtime. Everyone starts laughing (Including the other player!) I think this is weird, until they start sharing rape stories. Then, the character she's playing currently gets stuck by a Spider Eater and massively paralyzed. One of the other players says "I start to drag her off into the woods for a little fun", and everyone else breaks down in laughter. I'm just, befuddled. To his credit, the DM put his foot down and said "No, you cannot rape another player", but that was still it for me. I walked away from that game, and won't be heading back.
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2015 17:17
|
|
|
Captain Bravo posted:I think this is weird, until they start sharing rape stories. "gently caress it, I'm out."
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2015 17:21
|
|
|
The female player not being bothered by her character being raped is weird enough, but laughing about it? And sharing more stories along the same line for more laughs? How loving immature are these people? Also by 3rd edition do you mean 3.5? Because I wouldn't be surprised if they were using the original at this point.
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2015 17:41
|
|
|
YggiDee posted:I usually hear CN as Chaotic Stupid as well. IPlayVideoGames posted:CN is basically the "lol im so random" alignment, anyway. Railing Kill posted:I know it's possible, but I've never actually played with anyone using CN any other way. I hate it like I hate Malkavians in V:tM. I hate it because of what bad players do with it. I usually roll with it as the "dude who rolls with an all evil party despite being pretty ambivalent about everything as long as they don't order him to actually do anything." Although other games usually don't have strict alignment boxes, it helps in things like playing 40k chaos games because they really do expect you to maniacally cackle and cut up people for spare parts regularly, but that's just part of a universe where hell is both dickery and magical radiation at the same time.
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2015 22:27
|
|
|
Kavak posted:The female player not being bothered by her character being raped is weird enough, but laughing about it? And sharing more stories along the same line for more laughs? How loving immature are these people? When you're around socially awkward and morally skewed people for too long, it skews your morals as you attempt to fit in. Or they've never been pointed out how messed up it is. I've been told by one female DM (whom I thankfully never played in a game with), how she was the most likely in her group to use tentacles against female characters in her game, and was proud of it. Everyone else who was part of their gaming group laughed.
|
|
#
?
Nov 8, 2015 22:46
|
|
|
Kavak posted:Also by 3rd edition do you mean 3.5? Because I wouldn't be surprised if they were using the original at this point. Nope, 3.0, raw. Of course, half the time the DM would make poo poo up. Like when our group got ambushed and my character woke up with a bandit on his chest.  "Alright, well I'll cast Flaming Sphere" "He hits you and stops the spell from being cast." "Uhh... it doesn't work that way? I get to roll Concentration to try and cast anyway." "No you don't because you don't have any spells! You never got to prepare any since you just woke up!" "I don't have to prepare, I still have spells from yesterday, the book says I can cast them." "No you don't. I'm the DM and I say you don't have any spells. Nobody has any spells" "Well what about your butt buddy there? He just cast flaming hands." "Tim's a sorceror."
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2015 00:07
|
|
|
That sounds awful.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2015 00:42
|
|
|
Had another episode of WRESTLING ACTION WRESTLING! This time, the show was able to be sold to cable, so management wanted a breakout moment with two bankable stars. Unfortunately, 3 of the PCs were violent lunatics (The Monster, The Hardcore, and the Lester the Jester, the Wasted). The Ace, Tommy "Rebel Yell" Houston, was a good ol' boy who loved product placement and covering his own rear end. The night ended with a five man match for the title. The Ace, however, had hurt his hand trying to beat up the Wasted backstage. He cut a promo on why he should be part of the match (so he could plead injury when he didn't win) He rolled snakeyes, however, so the company president agreed...and made him referee! The match was a Burning Soul flaming tables match. To win, you had to launch your opponent through 2 flaming tables. The Jester eliminated the champ easily. The Hardcore hit the Monster with a shopping cart, launching him through two flaming tables. Unfortunately, the Ace pretended not to see it. The Wasted grabbed a microphone and called the Ace out on his BS, turning from villain to hero. He demanded a new stipulation...if the Ace wanted to be out here so bad, he was back in the match! The hardcore and the monster eventually beat each other into submission, leaving just the Rebel and the Jester. The Jester snuck to the top rope, trying to finish off the Ace... And botched. He spent all his momentum to make it a mixed bag, so instead of flying through the table, he sent his opponent soaring backwards across the ring, inches away from being burnt. The Ace gritted his teeth. He grabbed the Jester by the waist. [Rolled boxcars.] And FLUNG the Jester, overhead, with a broken hand, directly through two flaming tables. Tommy Houston made a clip that'd be in the intro reel for the federation for the next ten years. Yes, he somehow won a championship despite not being booked in the match.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2015 01:01
|
|
|
I played a character who might be considered CN if Serenity had alignments. He was a completely insane, cowardly street rat thief. I tried to keep his lunacies from actively sabotaging the party, like when we converted a taxicab to a regular car and he then took the now-unused dome light and meter and installed them on a random car on the street, or when he covered his tracks another time not by just swapping the plates off the motorcycle he stole, but also every other motorcycle in the neighborhood. He would compulsively break into shops and steal things while leaving other things; he was trading, you see.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2015 02:45
|
|
|
Bassetking posted:Creepers "freaking mundanes", sexually harassing students, and getting a well-earned comeuppance. What I'm wondering is: How did the campus administration not understand "These guys keep touching students inappropriately" well enough to ban them from the campus?
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2015 06:31
|
|
|
Kavak posted:The female player not being bothered by her character being raped is weird enough, but laughing about it? And sharing more stories along the same line for more laughs? How loving immature are these people? How in the hell is it that I never raped anyone IRL on in game, nor felt the urge to? Am I a broken person? A bad gamer?
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2015 06:53
|
|
|
Samizdata posted:How in the hell is it that I never raped anyone IRL on in game, nor felt the urge to? Am I a broken person? A bad gamer? A lot of roleplayers play RPGs because they genuinely like some facet of RPGs. A minority of roleplayers play RPGs or other tabletop because they were rejected from all other social circles and nerd culture has a heavy stigma against rejecting people. All it takes is one person to cause problems at a table, and eventually even gamer nerds will subtly reject major social problems. So they congregate.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2015 08:11
|
|
|
Moto42 posted:What I'm wondering is: How did the campus administration not understand "These guys keep touching students inappropriately" well enough to ban them from the campus? They probably figured that it was cheaper and easier to close the joint down, than it was to detail campus security or student foot patrols to deal with the creepers.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2015 13:48
|
|
|
Moto42 posted:Honestly, this is was the perfect way to handle the situation. The people that should have been putting a stop to this (both campus authorities and the GM's) weren't doing their jobs, so you beat them to death at their own game. 6 months later?
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2015 18:23
|
|
|
he reads slow ok
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2015 19:13
|
|
|
Bieeardo posted:They probably figured that it was cheaper and easier to close the joint down, than it was to detail campus security or student foot patrols to deal with the creepers. Welcome to Ohio State. There's one or two other factors at play, but this sums it up way more succinctly.
|
|
#
?
Nov 9, 2015 21:39
|
|
|
Captain Bravo posted:Well, last week, he brought the story up again, this time during some downtime. Everyone starts laughing (Including the other player!) I think this is weird, until they start sharing rape stories...  I hate you all.But in all seriousness, this situation is pretty hosed up and you are 100% right to sever all contact with these people. And PJOmega is right, it only takes one bad-apple to destroy a gaming group. The trick is recognizing the cancer and cutting it out early. Over the years, I have pretty much come to agree with the idea that it's usually better to turn your existing friends into gamers than it is to try to befriend people who are already gamers. I just thank the gods that my group of leper outcast rejects are all high-functioning dorks with lives and careers and families and interests outside gaming.
|
|
#
?
Nov 10, 2015 00:10
|
|
|
Galick posted:My group has been playing Way of the Wicked (a Pathfinder module that goes from 1 to 20, with you as the villains) and so far, it's been an absolute blast. No one's gone cat piss yet. We've got a bit of a megalomaniac antipaladin who was betrayed by his comrades and country, and went waaaay overboard in attaining vengeance. He's a seven foot tall monster who uses a two handed sword and axe alternatingly. Our second party member is a Tiefling slave trader, who is highly aristocratic and noble despite her previous occupation. She wields a scythe explicitly because she likes fostering the "demon who will eat your soul" image, because it amuses her. And I'm the last party member, a former assassin who was part of a team of assassins who got betrayed by her master and was left standing above a duke with a blade in hand while the guards busted in. Now her subplot is her reenacting Kill Bill.  Doodmons posted:It's been fun playing through the descent into monstrousness in the Vampire game I'm in. My PC started out as a relatively normal guy who was just starting to come to terms with the fact that he had to drink human blood to survive. Two real years of games later, during a discussion about minimising the amount of blood we burned through to reduce the amount of feeding we were doing, I found myself saying "Or we could just eat more humans. They're food, gently caress em" in complete seriousness. A couple of sessions later I was arguing vociferously in favour of helping an NPC sorcerer cripple the God-Machine at the cost of potentially millions of human lives and calling the other PCs out on their hypocrisy: "If you really cared about human lives, you'd walk out into the sun tomorrow - you've killed more people by accident than most serial killers. At least these people will die because of something worthwhile"  Bravoq: if resurrection is semi common is it ok to loot dead bodies, or do property rights continue post mortem?
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 10:16
|
|
|
Kommando posted:q: if resurrection is semi common is it ok to loot dead bodies, or do property rights continue post mortem? Actual answer: Depends on if it's at least as likely that they'll come back as an undead. Then you're probably justified in taking anything that could be used to do harm.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 16:51
|
|
|
Kommando posted:q: if resurrection is semi common is it ok to loot dead bodies, or do property rights continue post mortem? No, there is only one law more sacred than property rights in a setting where Death and Taxes has become just Taxes. And that is the ancient and honorable practice of dibs.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 17:36
|
|
|
When one of our party members died in our 1930's hobo World of Darkness game, I was the first to find his body. I asked myself (thinking aloud to the group), "I'm definitely going to take his money and liquor... but should I take his shoes? I mean, shoes are valuable to us as hobos." The rest of the group agreed: take his shoes. The dead can't use 'em, and it's what he would have done for us, as the most self-serving rear end in a top hat in the group. My character, who sold his soul to play the guitar real good, is now wearing a dead guy's shoes. Nope, no bad mojo with me. No sirree. What's the worst that could happen?
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 18:56
|
|
|
I wonder how it would go if you left it up to a dice roll whether or not clothing looted from the dead fit.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 20:15
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:I wonder how it would go if you left it up to a dice roll whether or not clothing looted from the dead fit. I would assume, if someone really wanted to split the hairs on clothing sizes, that unless you or the corpse are deliberately described as having different than average proportions, they would fit well enough.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 20:21
|
|
|
I can only imagine the legal cases that would result from resurrecting someone after their stuff got divided up by family or a will.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 20:27
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:I can only imagine the legal cases that would result from resurrecting someone after their stuff got divided up by family or a will. "In the event of my demise, I bequeath the following... ...in the event that I am resurrected prior to the 6 month anniversary of my demise, I want the following stuff back..."
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 20:39
|
|
|
"This is why we have a plane of Lawful Evil."
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 20:43
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:I can only imagine the legal cases that would result from resurrecting someone after their stuff got divided up by family or a will. This sounds like a great plot hook. Players get caught between a greedy family and a well-meaning lich who just wants his stuff back
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 20:44
|
|
|
Okay I've got a story about a doozy of a player in a doozy of a game. The game was a homebrew based on the Fate/Stay Night series, which I've never played but which seemed like a cool concept. Roughly, you've got a secret society of powerful rear end in a top hat mages in the modern day, and one of the things they like doing every few decades is holding Grail Wars, where seven specially chosen mages (some of which are representing the interests of important mage families, some of which are randos) each summon the spirit of a historical/legendary hero and have them do battle. If either hero or a mage get killed, that team's eliminated, and the last team standing gets to claim a Grail, a sort of all-powerful monkey's paw wishing device. The game had 14 PCs, which each PC playing either a mage or a hero. Since a bunch of those players were playing remotely, it used irregularly scheduled chatrooms instead of sessions, with regular thresholds for "Okay, wrap up your Day 1 business because we're moving on to Day 2" and whatnot. The main impetus was the team-based PVP against the 6 other teams (with the possibility of alliances and of strife within a team), but there were also a bunch of NPCs floating around everywhere, since everyone in this extended friend group who couldn't get into the game proper asked the GMs if they could still be involved, and the answer was always "Yeah, here's an NPC, you can play them." A final quick note about the homebrew system - it was set up to be deliberately vague and narrativist, since the GMs weren't interested in who could grind out the most statistical efficiency from their lightly-tested system, but in how players could use it to set up compelling fight scenes. You had a bunch of base stats and character-specific abilities ranked like A to D, with some rules on how to break ties. In each round of a fight, you'd declare which ability you were using to attack/defend, with a fair amount of leeway on whether the specific ability could be applied to this situation. If the ability you chose is ranked higher than theirs, or if the tiebreakers come out in your favor, hooray, you win! You can then inflict narrative consequences on your opponent. If that all sounds like it's set up for a huge clusterfuck, then yeah, definitely. It was the sort of game that would have been incredibly tricky even if everyone involved was operating in completely good faith, since holy poo poo is long-form, narrative-focused, team-based PVP in an intentionally mechanically loose homebrew system a minefield. And we certainly had good-faith players that stretched the game to its limits, often through the form of lodging extended complaints with the GMs whenever they felt other players were victimizing them. Maaaaybe the game could've sputtered to an operable conclusion with one or two of that kind of player involved. But it definitely couldn't have survived Danny. Since this post is already getting long as hell, I'll save Danny for a second post later, but here's a quick preview: when his character first met mine, he immediately called her a whore in-character while simultaneously sending me an out-of-character note explaining how calling her a whore was part of his intricate strategy for winning this conversation.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 21:33
|
|
|
Super Waffle posted:This sounds like a great plot hook. Players get caught between a greedy family and a well-meaning lich who just wants his stuff back And then posting this to a group, they threw in the problems of reincarnation - including proof of identification and came up with an idea for a short campaign for adventurer-lawyers sorting out this issue.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 21:33
|
|
|
Jenny Angel posted:Since this post is already getting long as hell, I'll save Danny for a second post later, but here's a quick preview: when his character first met mine, he immediately called her a whore in-character while simultaneously sending me an out-of-character note explaining how calling her a whore was part of his intricate strategy for winning this conversation. This sounds like a really novel meaning of the word 'intricate'.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 21:35
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:a short campaign for adventurer-lawyers "Negotiating the terms of your ring of three wishes? I dunno kid, that kind of document can wind up three inches thick, and that's if we can even find the gods who'll admit precedent in trans-planar law. If you can pay us we'll try, but any lives lost along the way will be on your head."
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 21:40
|
|
|
Robindaybird posted:And then posting this to a group, they threw in the problems of reincarnation - including proof of identification and came up with an idea for a short campaign for adventurer-lawyers sorting out this issue. I can see a world like that having a ton of problem with fraudulent resurrection, like faking a resurrection Weekend at Bernie's style to get the dead guy's stuff back or even pretending to be a resurrected dead guy to take over his estate.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 22:10
|
|
|
the_steve posted:"In the event of my demise, I bequeath the following... Six months is awfully soon. Modern probate proceedings (at least, where I am) take longer than six months. It's also settled law where I am that a probate court doesn't have jurisdiction over an estate if the decedent isn't actually dead. Therefore, if someone turns up alive for whatever reason (the real-world reason is that the person was presumed dead due to long absence, but being actually dead and getting raised would work too), the probate proceeding would terminate and the de-decedent would just automatically get their stuff back. The difficult case to provide for would be one where the decedent returns to life once the probate estate has been closed (typically over 12 months from the date of decease). I wasn't able to find probate cases where someone who was presumed dead and had his or her estate fully probated turned up later, wanting their stuff back. That might be because I wasn't looking real hard, but it might also be because if someone has enough stuff to care about it, they'd probably show up to get it back once a notice got published suggesting it was about to get turned over wholesale, e.g. to the presumed decedent's rear end in a top hat brother. I think that legally the way forward is comparable to what expectant liches and similar undead ought to do, which is to establish a testamentary trust. Undead probably have the most difficult problem, because as decedents whose unlife is expected to continue perpetually, they would have a real problem with a Common Law-style Rule Against Perpetuities limiting a testator's ability to make a provision in a will that won't be determined within twenty-one years of the death of a person alive at the time of the death of the testator (it's a weird rule, apologies for the weird paraphrase). A person who expects to be raised could write a will provision that places their property in trust for twenty-one years, for the benefit of a schedule of living individuals that includes the testator themself should they return from the dead. A person who expects to become a lich couldn't do this, because the lich's unlife could theoretically last for over 21 years after everyone else then living has died. What the lich needs to do is establish a charitable trust for all of its property, which is not subject to the rule against perpetuities, and pay itself a stipend as a trustee. Moving to North Dakota would also work.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 22:14
|
|
|
chitoryu12 posted:I can see a world like that having a ton of problem with fraudulent resurrection, like faking a resurrection Weekend at Bernie's style to get the dead guy's stuff back or even pretending to be a resurrected dead guy to take over his estate. Toss in the reincarnation spell druids get and some interesting shenanigans can occur.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 22:22
|
|
|
some loving LIAR posted:Six months is awfully soon. Modern probate proceedings (at least, where I am) take longer than six months. It's also settled law where I am that a probate court doesn't have jurisdiction over an estate if the decedent isn't actually dead. Therefore, if someone turns up alive for whatever reason (the real-world reason is that the person was presumed dead due to long absence, but being actually dead and getting raised would work too), the probate proceeding would terminate and the de-decedent would just automatically get their stuff back. This is incredibly dumb poo poo yet I am somehow fascinated and invested. Adventure law! Why North Dakota?
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 22:42
|
|
|
VanSandman posted:This is incredibly dumb poo poo yet I am somehow fascinated and invested. Adventure law! Why North Dakota? Actually I misspoke. I meant South Dakota. SD abolished that life-in-being-plus-21-years rule. If are an American who wants to command their property from beyond the grave, South Dakota is the place for you.
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 23:04
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 21, 2024 21:18 |
|
|
"Your honour, my client was certainly not trespassing. The plaintiff's land ownership extends only over the prime material and my client was clearly within the bounds of the ethereal plane at the time of this so called 'peeping tom' incident"
|
|
#
?
Nov 11, 2015 23:10
|
|