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Dave Brookshaw posted:Yeah, so because vampires don't regain willpower through sleep, the rule that anyone does isn't in vampire. werewolf, beast, and promethean have the omission, because they do but their books don't say that they do. Mage onwards realised that it'd been left out, so Mage does say that mages do. Why?
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Jun 24, 2018 02:44
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MonsieurChoc posted:Why? I imagine the thought process is that Vampires are creatures of violence and sin, need to engage in bad behavior to get their willpower fix. For humans, willpower is an expression of passion and effort, while Vampires have to pretend they have passions because they only kinda do. But yeah I can't imagine I'd ever want to play that way.
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Jun 24, 2018 05:02
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They don't exactly have refreshing sleep cycles. Waking at sundown is described as feeling like a heart attack in reverse. Not quite about sin, the Requiem/Dirge are things that reaffirm their sense of identity and who they are. Yawgmoth posted:Probably because if we spent as much time on feeding scenes for blood, mask/dirge for willpower, and aspirations for individual beats as the book expects, we wouldn't have any time left in a session to have a plot. I appreciate not every ST likes to factor in aspirations when running games. But unless your plot is happening completely separate from the players it should have scenes where they can act like themselves. They're really easy things to play up. "Point out an absurdity in the current state of affairs, to lighten the tone," shouldn't exactly take up that much time. It's like half the internet. A Nomad's "Abandon a home," is something that can be played up in an introduction. nofather fucked around with this message at 08:46 on Jun 24, 2018 |
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Jun 24, 2018 08:37
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nofather posted:They don't exactly have refreshing sleep cycles. Waking at sundown is described as feeling like a heart attack in reverse. Yeah, my interpretation is that the requiem is ultimately always a downward spiral. The mask and dirge are about reaffirming yourself in the face off that, forestalling the collapse of your identity and will.
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Jun 24, 2018 08:40
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MonsieurChoc posted:Why? There's an explanation in the post from Rose that got linked a few posts ago: quote:Vampires don't get Willpower back from resting by default. One of the things Willpower represents is strength of self, parallel to Humanity. You get it for affirming who you are, who you pretend to be, and what you're connected to. Being a vampire is spiritually exhausting, and you have to emphasize those things in order to regain what normal people gain from rest.
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Jun 24, 2018 12:31
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nofather posted:I appreciate not every ST likes to factor in aspirations when running games. But unless your plot is happening completely separate from the players it should have scenes where they can act like themselves. They're really easy things to play up. "Point out an absurdity in the current state of affairs, to lighten the tone," shouldn't exactly take up that much time. It's like half the internet. A Nomad's "Abandon a home," is something that can be played up in an introduction.
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Jun 24, 2018 15:42
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I found I was getting dragged down with feeding scenes too, so I eventually adopted a rule where people who sent in a downtime e-mail started next game at full pool -3. That's generally enough for as much combat as I put in my games, so if a fight goes long or someone gets beat up there's still the need to roleplay that feeding scene, and now they're struggling against wound penalties and hunger frenzy, which amps the drama up. edit- i was having trouble getting my players to submit downtime e-mails, which resulted in a few games where I prepared a lot of stuff that didn't get used, so this was a stopgap to address the e-mail issue. It glosses over some of the personal horror of the need to perpetually feast on living humans, but that wasn't a central focus of my game either way. Your mileage, etc etc.
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Jun 24, 2018 15:45
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Yawgmoth posted:I'm not a huge fan of aspirations in the first place because they're a guessing game between you and the ST. "Hey, is your game gonna have... this? yaaaaaay, I get xp! everyone else, better luck next time." I can tell what they were trying to do with them but they utterly failed on that front. And sure, "abandon a home" is something you can probably pull off once a session easy, but what about "discover secret knowledge" or "challenge a superior" or "deny a compromise"? Most of the archetypes just don't have something you can background easily. See, I feel like 'guessing game' is the precise opposite of aspirations. As a GM I see them as a request from the player: 'I would like a chance to do X with this character' and then as the GM I wrote in opportunities to do so. If an aspiration has no purchase in the game I had planned and can't usefully be added, I'd talk to the player and tell them it's not going to work out, and try to find a workable aspiration that's similar. I'm running Mage, for example, and due to a long-term player aspiration ('oppose the servants of the Father') the local Seers have taken on more of a Paternoster affiliation. Working with players to make sure their characters fit the story you want to tell, and incorporating their interests into the setting, is a good way to make sure the game is engaging and full, in my opinion. It also lets the player characters have more but-in with the plot right from the start.
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Jun 24, 2018 16:01
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Humans regain wp by sleeping in part because you wake up refreshed. Vampires don't so much sleep as stop being animate until the sun goes away. None of the processes that would have you wake up feeling better and more resilient are happening.
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Jun 24, 2018 16:10
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Joe Slowboat posted:See, I feel like 'guessing game' is the precise opposite of aspirations. As a GM I see them as a request from the player: 'I would like a chance to do X with this character' and then as the GM I wrote in opportunities to do so. If an aspiration has no purchase in the game I had planned and can't usefully be added, I'd talk to the player and tell them it's not going to work out, and try to find a workable aspiration that's similar. I'm running Mage, for example, and due to a long-term player aspiration ('oppose the servants of the Father') the local Seers have taken on more of a Paternoster affiliation. Honestly the biggest problem I have with aspirations is that they tend to expect me to have a plot in mind for my character right from the off, and that's the ST's job. If I wanted to make a character who has a handful of plot points that absolutely must get fulfilled in order to develop, I'd write a goddamned book. The point of an RPG, for me, is specifically to not have full narrative control. Most of the time, what I put down on paper before session 1 looks a hell of a lot different than what I'm playing after session 3, and the way aspirations function seem to not only disregard that option but fully tell me that I'm playing the game wrong for doing so. Working with players to make sure their characters fit the story and incorporating their interests into the setting is great. Forcing them to write half a book for mechanical benefit sucks. It's way better to just leave it situationally open, rotate the spotlight as desired by everyone, and give everyone the same xp.
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Jun 24, 2018 16:37
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The way I figure, the minutia is there for people who want to use it. Personally, I figure that experience comes from doing things, and the more time we spend doing things the more beats they accrue. So I tend to just throw beats into a pool when they're doing cool/interesting things or are learning more about the world or the plots. I don't even bother dividing the pool because that just doesn't seem like fun to me. If they're doing stuff that fulfills an aspiration (or is in pursuit of an obsession) then we throw another one in the pool. That way we don't have to worry about them too much, but we can still pick ones that work with what they're running after. Two sessions ago we did almost zero plot, but they got a ton of beats because they were still doing things that were fun and memorable and provided some background and depth to all the plot they were doing. We're about 45 sessions in, and they have about 60 XP between regular and arcane, and that's not so terrible. They're starting to feel the crunch, so I may look for ways to increase the rate of gain. I know other people just give static XP and that could work too. Really, just do what works for your players and if they're not having a bunch of fun with it, throw that part away and find a way to progress without it being a burden to the table. It just comes down to doing what is fun and works for your group.
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Jun 24, 2018 16:52
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Yawgmoth posted:I'm not a huge fan of aspirations in the first place because they're a guessing game between you and the ST. "Hey, is your game gonna have... this? yaaaaaay, I get xp! everyone else, better luck next time." I can tell what they were trying to do with them but they utterly failed on that front. Ideally, the storyteller looks at the Aspirations written on the character sheet, and weaves what the players wants into the game. It's not a guessing game beyond the abilities of the ST. quote:And sure, "abandon a home" is something you can probably pull off once a session easy, but what about "discover secret knowledge" or "challenge a superior" or "deny a compromise"? Most of the archetypes just don't have something you can background easily. Discover secret knowledge is most of Auspex. Challenging a superior is easy given the covenants and sire structure. Denying a compromise is what Lashing Out is made for.
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Jun 24, 2018 22:06
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nofather posted:Ideally, the storyteller looks at the Aspirations written on the character sheet, and weaves what the players wants into the game. It's not a guessing game beyond the abilities of the ST. Yawgmoth kinda covered this already, but in my experience it kind of ends up being one. Mostly because everyone in my group (myself included) tends to forget that Aspirations are a thing until at best 10 minutes before the session but often two hours into it. And for the long-term Aspirations of the "punch some Seers" variety, it can be hard to smoothly integrate them into the plot. Sure you can introduce the Seers into your chronicle about intruding in Vampire politics, but it's something that requires a fair amount of work even before your players unexpectedly end up locked up in a haunted house for three sessions. One solution to that is of course "pick better Aspirations", but imo that's another strike against the mechanic. One player goes for the example Aspiration "learn to play the guitar" and sits on that one for five sessions because the murder mystery plot doesn't have a lot of room for musicl essons, another player figures out how to work the system and cracks of 2 Beats per session because they know to pick less specific targets like "learn a secret".
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Jun 24, 2018 22:21
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I mean, then you just use Group Beats? I use Aspirations and Obsessions in Mage to count out reasonable amounts of time for new EXP, so that player EXP gain feels like a result of their actions and improvement, and the EXP gain is directly tied into things happening - especially research. It's proven very useful for pacing the game, and allows for sessions spent researching abstract magical things that tie indirectly to the plot to be mechanically rewarding, which also lets me get some setting info out there and focus on the Mage cornerstone interests of 'weird occult stuff.' Obviously, I don't expect every Aspiration to come up every session, but being able to built sessions around aspirations is useful, especially when the players have pulled back from the main plot to pursue their own interests for a while (this especially happens when they're low on mana, physically beaten up, suffering some conditions, and don't want to go anywhere particularly dangerous until they can get themselves back in shape; unless the story and character dynamics demand immediately running off, taking a session to cool down and focus on research is very Mage. I'd recommend doing the same with Vampires and feeding, or woofs and a standard hunt - a way to reinforce the setting and gather extra resources, and for players and characters to center themselves).
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Jun 24, 2018 23:05
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nofather posted:Ideally, the storyteller looks at the Aspirations written on the character sheet, and weaves what the players wants into the game. It's not a guessing game beyond the abilities of the ST. quote:Discover secret knowledge is most of Auspex. Challenging a superior is easy given the covenants and sire structure. Denying a compromise is what Lashing Out is made for. Joe Slowboat posted:I mean, then you just use Group Beats?
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Jun 25, 2018 00:32
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I usually tell the players to take Aspirations that are poo poo they like to do anyways. Like, "view the future" for a Time mage level of poo poo.
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Jun 25, 2018 02:10
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See, I like having mechanical hooks in the system for the thing I already like to do with my players, because continually discussing the direction of the game is a big part of how I keep it from getting aimless and eventually (quickly) running out of steam. Even if you don't do this directly, as an ST you're often trying to manage this same task blind without clear input from the players. That can be fine for some groups, but I prefer a more explicit collective understanding of our narrative goals. This approach is explained pretty poorly in/completely absent from the books, though, that's for sure.
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Jun 25, 2018 02:17
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Yawgmoth posted:Ideally D&D classes are equally capable of impacting combat and non-combat situations. Ideally L5R rewards ranking up your rings as much as your skills and taking flavorful advantages. Ideally the Judicial, Legislative, and Executive branches of the US government keep each other in check. Ideally, rich people pay their taxes like everyone else and no one rapes or murders or steals. Ideally the human body doesn't turn on itself and destroy an organ with its own immune system. Unfortunately, nothing in this world is ideal. Okay, then put straight. It's part of the rules, and the proper way the game is meant to be played. People may think their houserules are great, but you've been describing a game where the players have no control in a story. They can't even make a scene happen. This is a non-ideal situation. It's not even a baseline situation, it's a bad situation for everyone, because the ST is lecturing, and the players are just sitting and listening. quote:Unfortunately, these are all things that require a scene, which was my whole point. You can say "I walk away from the obfuscated tent in the alley and sleep in the park janitor's closet." You can't say "I find out a secret thing about the Ordo Dracul" because that requires ST input. Same for denying a compromise, because that requires a scene in which your ST offers one in the first place. Same for challenging a superior, because you must first have a superior to challenge, and something to challenge them over. That's not even getting into the matter that these all range wildly from "minor inconvenience" to "could very well get you a tanning session". A character with Auspex 1, who cannot use Auspex 1 because the Storyteller doesn't want to be bothered to describe something that isn't within whatever story they're telling is not what the game's about. quote:Sure, the "just houserule it!" defense is fine if you have an ST willing and able to fix poo poo. But if you have a newbie ST, or an ST who has a boner for RAW, or is just skittish about "breaking things" for any of a dozen reasons, then you're hosed. And RAW, vampires don't get WP back without jerking their ego off, don't get blood without feeding (which takes at the least a few minutes of "how do you do it, okay roll, okay describe what you do, okay next person" each), and everyone gets separately tracked beats. It's several steps back, designwise. You are describing the houserule. Your non-ideal Storyteller is running their own houserules that ignores core aspects of the game. 'So, Storytellers, be sure to pay attention to what Aspirations your players have selected. If you were planning on a suspenseful, low-key session with little overt supernatural influence, it might be a problem if all of your players have chosen Aspirations like “destroy a supernatural threat,” or “see a monster with my own eyes.” It doesn’t mean you have to change your plans completely, but you may need to tweak the session a bit to allow for some details that fit with the Aspirations a little better. Or you can sit down and talk with the players, and make sure that you are all on the same page with regards to the story that you are trying to tell.' Aspirations are why your players are sitting at a table. It's a declaration of what they want and it's written on their character sheet which you should have a copy of or at least be able to see.
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Jun 25, 2018 02:39
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Pretty sure Group Beats are a sidebar in Mage, and in Werewolf, suggesting how to do it. That's not a houserule that's using an explicit option.
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Jun 25, 2018 03:10
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Yawgmoth posted:Ideally D&D classes are equally capable of impacting combat and non-combat situations. Ideally L5R rewards ranking up your rings as much as your skills and taking flavorful advantages. Ideally the Judicial, Legislative, and Executive branches of the US government keep each other in check. Ideally, rich people pay their taxes like everyone else and no one rapes or murders or steals. Ideally the human body doesn't turn on itself and destroy an organ with its own immune system. Unfortunately, nothing in this world is ideal. Some of these things are not like the others
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Jun 25, 2018 03:46
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Joe Slowboat posted:Pretty sure Group Beats are a sidebar in Mage, and in Werewolf, suggesting how to do it. That's not a houserule that's using an explicit option. While I responded to that section I was talking about their view on handling aspirations and players in general. Aspirations don't work mechanically because they don't work in the houseruled way someone runs the game isn't really a good argument. Using their 'ideal' analogy, it's like saying laws are bad because crime exists.
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Jun 25, 2018 04:02
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nofather posted:Okay, then put straight. It's part of the rules, and the proper way the game is meant to be played. People may think their houserules are great, but you've been describing a game where the players have no control in a story. They can't even make a scene happen. This is a non-ideal situation. It's not even a baseline situation, it's a bad situation for everyone, because the ST is lecturing, and the players are just sitting and listening. quote:A character with Auspex 1, who cannot use Auspex 1 because the Storyteller doesn't want to be bothered to describe something that isn't within whatever story they're telling is not what the game's about. quote:You are describing the houserule. Your non-ideal Storyteller is running their own houserules that ignores core aspects of the game. 
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Jun 25, 2018 04:12
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Man Yawgmoth, you always talk about groups that sound bad as hell. Have you considered maybe you just play in bad groups???
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Jun 25, 2018 05:38
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Yawgmoth posted:Except that your little snippet doesn't take into account that the players are very likely to not really talk about the game outside of game time, and maybe 20 minutes before/after that. So you're gonna have a "talk about the game" session every other session? Or are you gonna hope that all of your players are the type to come home and chat with everyone else every day about aspirations for their character so they can synergize their goals for maximum beats ROI? Or maybe you just have 12 different aspirations and try to cram as many of them in to every session as you can? Because honestly none of those sound like fun options. But you think that an ST that has a plot in mind is "lecturing" and that not having strict mechanics for everything means that the players are incapable of doing anything, so You're really doing a number on that straw man. Just because they don't work for you doesn't make them unworkable, and your version of Aspirations is less like RAW than nofather's, I'm pretty sure. First off, the point of having concrete Aspirations is to take ten minutes after session to say 'hey, you achieved X, where do you want to go next?' and then the GM has the info they need, and players are rewarded mechanically for providing that info, such that the story can be customized to the characters. With, again, Group Beats as a suggested method of play. Moreover, it seems reasonable to say that you expect an RPG to have a much more linear script than Aspirations are meant for; the point of Aspirations is the sandbox style of play the Chronicles pushes, where characters' ambitions, vices, and supernatural urges drive play as much as pursuing a prewritten plot. It does require a GM to be more light on their feet, but it allows for things like feeding, research, aspirations, all of these elements to become organic parts of the session rather than (as you seem to imagine them) impediments to having a session. If anything, they're a framework for helping GMs to write looser games, and I've found them very helpful for that in actual play. EDIT: By which I mean to suggest that you don't like the style of play aspirations (and obsessions, and vice and virtue, and Touchstones and Dirge and so on) represent, which is totally reasonable, but maybe consider that other people do actually find that method rewarding and functional for their groups?
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Jun 25, 2018 05:39
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Joe Slowboat posted:What's wrong with Gnosticism? I had an enormous post about this written up and then the forums went down and I couldn't post it, so here's the super super condensed version three days later: I don't like the Gnostic leanings of Mage because Mage's Secret Truths (The Supernal Realms) are THE BEST secret truths, and are, in fact, the Platonic Ideals of the world, and it is impossible to get more True than those. Truth-with-a-capital-T. Also, the world is a Lie, and so the stuff that happens there is not True, and essentially unimportant. This is in line with Gnostic leanings as I understand them (Spirit good/material bad, and you must seek Secret Knowledge), but the insinuation that every Promethean that's every struggled, died, and learned at the end of a long and painful road what it means to be human is irrelevant, every Vampire that fought and failed to keep his humanity and decided to watch one final sunrise before he became a true monster is irrelevant, and every machination of the God Machine is irrelevant irks me. Demon I feel does this better because while you are still encouraged to secret hidden knowledge and secret lore, it doesn't ever lean into the idea of 'Normal world not important', and does the opposite: Many demons wouldn't have fallen if they didn't care, deeply, about earth and the mortals that live there. Many of them really deeply submerge in their Cover and enjoy the freedom to go get a donut and some coffee and make friends and chat about the weather, 'cause free will is a hell of a drug.
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Jun 25, 2018 06:09
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Crasical posted:I had an enormous post about this written up and then the forums went down and I couldn't post it, so here's the super super condensed version three days later: I mean, to take the Mage standpoint, the problem with the phenomenal world is that while it emanates from the truth, it has been poisoned by the Lie. The Silver Ladder thinks that what is True in this world is human victory, and human accomplishment, and (in theory) would be huge cheerleaders for the Prometheans acquiring a human soul (...though, uh, not in practice because organizational-level Disquiet means they think Prometheans should probably be mass-produced to serve humanity. Thanks, Disquiet.) More generally, Mages see the Phenomenal world as fundamentally less real than the Supernal, but that doesn't mean the Phenomenal doesn't matter. The Ladder want to reformat the phenomenal world without the Lie, and moreover to institute transformations in it that serve the Ladder's goal of absolute human mastery over the cosmos. The Libertines think the Supernal Symbols are generated by humanity and shaped by them from the phenomenal up, and therefore humanity IS magic. That's their Order motto! Gnosticism includes, after all, the idea of the divine spark, the idea that all human beings are higher and more noble than the world that entraps them. The Lie is not 'meaningless' but rather a prison, and to the Pentacle, evil. The Exarchs represent human oppression and ignorance because those matter - in fact, the Supernal Tyrants who rule the universe represent those antihumanistic concepts. Human life isn't pointless to the Pentacle, but tragic. The best comparison is to any ideology that holds modern society is ruthlessly unjust: there's a larger Ascension War to be fought, but the injustice is found in human lives. Also, many mages, being selfish (it's the Chronicles setting, after all) just want to personally bail on the Lie and attain Truth for themselves, but that doesn't mean the line as a whole thinks they're right to do so. EDIT: Which isn't to say that your issue with Gnosticism isn't fair; Gnosticism absolutely holds that the esoteric and conceptual is more important than what's immediately present. I just also really love the deeply hubristic humanism of the Pentacle, and the way Mage's Gnosticism directly synthesizes a spiritual war against the Demiurge and Aeons with the struggle against oppression. Mages are, at their best, revolutionaries with a human creed, set against a universe ruled by principles of tyranny. At their worst, they're aspirants to those same thrones. Joe Slowboat fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Jun 25, 2018 |
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Jun 25, 2018 06:29
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Crasical posted:I had an enormous post about this written up and then the forums went down and I couldn't post it, so here's the super super condensed version three days later: You know, the mages might be wrong. Certainly the baseline setting assumption is that the Supernal is indeed the end-all final say on what is True, but there are enough hooks in the setting to poke holes in that notion if you want to go that route. Also, only wizards whose heads have fully disappeared up their own rear end thinks that nothing that happens outside of the Supernal matters.
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Jun 25, 2018 06:35
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Obligatum VII posted:You know, the mages might be wrong. Certainly the baseline setting assumption is that the Supernal is indeed the end-all final say on what is True, but there are enough hooks in the setting to poke holes in that notion if you want to go that route. Ironically, even taking the Supernal as the whole of Truth (I do for my games, but then, I run Mage), there are Truths banished from the Supernal lying around in the Phenomenal and elsewhere (see: the Bound, and various other similar entities). Of course, that sort of poorly-organized reality is probably why we have an Abyss. Thanks, Atlantis, you broke Truth.
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Jun 25, 2018 06:37
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Neopie posted:Man Yawgmoth, you always talk about groups that sound bad as hell. Have you considered maybe you just play in bad groups??? Yeah. Also, I'm baffled by this argument that aspirations are bad because they make you play the game in order to get your metacurrency that lets you do stuff when you play the game. If you don't want to do feeding, or interact with social structures, or lash out in moments of tension, or have personal goals that drive against and alongside everyone else's goals, or use spoopy vampire powers, or whatever the gently caress else... Why are you even playing this game?! That's literally what this game is about! I have had zero problems with aspirations and mask/dirge mechanics. People manage their willpower well, don't expect a million WP a session (and since almost no powers run on it now that's much easier, and the ones that do are show stoppers that shouldn't be happening every scene), and we talk about aspirations and goals. Then that stuff just... Arises in play. If you can't make defying a superior, or discovering secret knowledge, interesting in a game of Vampire, you're not good at being a storyteller.
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Jun 25, 2018 07:22
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Joe Slowboat posted:I mean, to take the Mage standpoint, the problem with the phenomenal world is that while it emanates from the truth That's actually not the Mage viewpoint. That might be the unascended Pentacle view of things, but cosmologically those a bit higher up the pay scale *know* that the Phenomenal influences the Supernal. It can't really be the objective Higher Truth if it's changed by the Phenomenal, can it? If it changes in the face of the Phenomenal, it can really only be subjective Truth, Truth that exists in comparison to the Phenomenal. Without that perspective it is, effectively, nothing. And of course those beings discuss if there's an even greater Truth waiting beyond the Supernal. In short, Mages don't know poo poo. They just think they do because they have super powers and hubris makes their bathing suit place feel funny.
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Jun 25, 2018 07:35
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Obligatum VII posted:Also, only wizards whose heads have fully disappeared up their own rear end thinks that nothing that happens outside of the Supernal matters. with my apologies to Tiny Deer for mangling their post: Tiny Deer posted:The World of Darkness for Mage is pretty much gnostic. The world as the average everyday person understands it is flawed and evil, created to imprison human souls. The average everyday person would perceive the Thyrsus next door as the threat only because they are fundamentally ignorant of the nature of the world they inhabit. In the reality of the game world, Awakened mages using magic at all is always at least slightly positive, no matter what evil thing they're doing, because at least it resists the Lie. "Only we can perceive the Truth, and thus everything we do is in the end morally justified." So I can only imagine that most wizards are at least slowly approaching 1 to 1 head and arse ratios. Which is On Brand for mages, if nothing else. It is a game about pride and hubris, after all.
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Jun 25, 2018 07:59
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Mulva, just because one can change what's true doesn't mean it's not true. It is not currently true that I am asleep. Soon, by my actions, I will be asleep. Change occurs. Motion exists. Platonism does not, in fact, require the Forms to be eternal and unchanging for them to be the true underlying reality of the cosmos. The entities who speculate about a transsupernal reality do so in the name of Monism, of the possible apprehension of Brahman or the Ground of Being, not because they look at Imperial Magic or Ascension and say 'these Forms instantiate all reality but since I can change them (and in doing so totally transform all reality), they must not really be real.' I realize you are opposed to Mage being right that the setting is Gnostic and Neoplatonic even in games of Mage, but if your argument is 'the forms cannot be changed by acts of will, because magic... isn't... real?' I'm not sure you're quite getting the point of the game.
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Jun 25, 2018 09:15
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In the world of darkness, Shin Megami Tensei is the popular monster catching and breeding game, and Pokemon is the series for enthusiasts and for small children. The hit augmented reality mobile game is called MegaTen GO-etic. (I encourage and seek more posts in this vein)
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Jun 25, 2018 10:51
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Joe Slowboat posted:Pretty sure Group Beats are a sidebar in Mage, and in Werewolf, suggesting how to do it. That's not a houserule that's using an explicit option. If you need to use optional rules to make the game work properly, there's a failure in design somewhere. Yes, it's not a houserule, but given how many flaws in nWoD 2.0 are apparently solved simply by using Group Beats, it's bad design that it's "optional" and not mandatory. In a well-designed game it shouldn't be possible to pass over something so vital, and it's not invalid to critique the game for having flaws in the "default" mode.
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Jun 25, 2018 11:43
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Mages understanding fundamental reality better doesn't make everyone else less important, in the same way that physicists understanding reality doesn't make everyone else important in real life.
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Jun 25, 2018 12:22
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Joe Slowboat posted:Mulva, just because one can change what's true doesn't mean it's not true. It is not currently true that I am asleep. Soon, by my actions, I will be asleep. Change occurs. Motion exists. Platonism does not, in fact, require the Forms to be eternal and unchanging for them to be the true underlying reality of the cosmos. You know at this point there's literally no meaning to anything about the Supernal, right? "Well it's the Truth, but it changes all the time, and it's Above us, but literally everything around here defines it, but they still represent the higher state of reality even though they are overtly defined and changed by reality itself". To which any sane, rational person goes "So why do I give a poo poo about it?". It can change the world? So can literally any action. It gives people magic powers? What *DOESN'T* give people magic powers? Man you can accidentally walk near a spooky house and end up with a bunch of magic powers. It's also not very gnostic. "The material is evil, except it defines the spirit, so I guess maybe ignoring the material is kind of stupid? I don't know I feel like we didn't think this through very well.". So what is the Supernal to you beyond some vaguely occult place that is fairly a bitch to get to?
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Jun 25, 2018 12:42
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Mulva posted:So what is the Supernal to you beyond some vaguely occult place that is fairly a bitch to get to? My reading of it is that the Supernal is ultimately a bit broken. So even if it was at one point the Platonic Truth of reality, it's having a mid-life crisis right now and can't be trusted to not go out and buy a red sports car. So if you're trying to rely on it for the ultimate Truth, you're only going to be disappointed when it doesn't show up for your dance recital or basketball game. So it stands to follow (unless you're a Pentacle mage) that if the supernal is broken and apparently malleable, then the fact that the material can then also be malleable and change isn't really a surprise. But that means anyone who notices is going to also go through a phenomenological problem, because the 'reality' of magic that they thought they understood, isn't really the reality of magic and it turns out there's this whole cosmos out there that has something to say about reality. The other lines just didn't get a book on their slice of the cosmos the way mage did, so we have a whole lot less to debate about because they don't claim to also be the full answer to all reality, partially because they don't have the ego for it, and partly because the record keeping is also less reliable. Personally, I would laugh if it's all just a fantastical creation of a giant weaving story managed by the cream of the crop True Fae in the cosmos somewhere. The only reason awakened magic works is because it makes for a good story for the people interested in binge watching it, because their favorite TV show was cancelled.
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Jun 25, 2018 15:31
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LatwPIAT posted:If you need to use optional rules to make the game work properly, there's a failure in design somewhere. I for sure use group beats for live play. For PlayByPost games - individual beats are a lot easier to track and make more sense as different players have different time/effort commitments that don't easily align like a weekly tabletop. Aspirations did feel a little tricky to implement for my group at first. I don't like the book examples too well (pick a lock seems like something only a person completely new to gaming might find interesting). To standardize things a bit, until people have a hang of aspirations, I urge them to choose one of three types: 1) NPC - Choose an NPC you especially want some screen time with. 2) Plot Type - We go heavy intrigue, supported by politics or violence depending on character/location. If you want something different like a murder mystery or a monster hunt, let me know. 3) Vampiric Theme - Choose something like - Humanity, the Cacophony, Hunting Grounds or the ramifications of Dominate and Free Will - that you'd like especially explore. If you've got something else, or if you have additional details for the above (I want to hunt an Angel) I'll work with you. I also let people change Aspirations pretty freely as long as there's a 'rest' moment of some kind. I don't think any of this is too intrusive, and the bulk of the narrative is still going to be filtered through my STing. But - a heads up on what people are interested in lets me pepper those interests into the plots I've been cooking up. I agree that's making my job easier (or at least more enjoyable), but I see that as a positive.
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Jun 25, 2018 15:38
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Neopie posted:Man Yawgmoth, you always talk about groups that sound bad as hell. Have you considered maybe you just play in bad groups??? Lupercalcalcal posted:Also, I'm baffled by this argument that aspirations are bad because they make you play the game in order to get your metacurrency that lets you do stuff when you play the game. Joe Slowboat posted:EDIT: By which I mean to suggest that you don't like the style of play aspirations (and obsessions, and vice and virtue, and Touchstones and Dirge and so on) represent, which is totally reasonable, but maybe consider that other people do actually find that method rewarding and functional for their groups?
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Jun 25, 2018 15:44
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I kind of agree with Yawkmoth that aspirations can be distracting from the purpose of the game, specially in a big group. I'd say they work the best in a more regular game (weekly sessions) with a more intimate group, say between two to four players. Beyond that, you really need to focus the game on the plot, otherwise people will spend a lot of time in downtime as you give scene-time for everyone's aspirations. I've been on both sides of the fence, back when I was running games at university that kind of meta-narrative instrument was pretty good at keeping everyone involved, specially because we'd spend the week talking about the game anyway, so it worked well as a sandbox in a character-focused experience. Nowadays, mostly the same players - plus a few extras - , we are all considerably busier, so we only end up having sessions every two weeks (or even monthly due to things happening), so we end up being a lot more plot-focused because we need to keep things moving and make scenes about the group rather than the individual characters. We do use sessions where a large part of the players are missing to focus more on the characters and slow down the plot a bit, but otherwise Aspirations are a distraction in a game that's more focused on the group-dynamics and plot.
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Jun 25, 2018 16:08
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