@Superbia Just be aware that FS3 is not very “crunchy” and so does not have a lot of the kinds of systems you’d typically find in a TTRPG. Like for Mechs in Battletech - there’s no concept of heat, ammo, range, critical hits, etc.

For a light-touch story driven thing, FS3 vehicles would surely do fine. It’s just not going to resemble any of the “mech wargame” systems.

@Prototart said in What happened, man?:

i don’t believe you

Do it for her

@MisterBoring said in AI PBs:

Use stock photos or other art published online for free under a Creative-Commons (or similar) license.

I actually did this once, way back when in the Haunted Memories days for a character. Though it was less an ethical reasoning and more that I just happened to find some stock photos that were so perfect for what I envisioned that I had to use them, so I paid a few dollars to remove the stock image watermark. It did feel kinda good though.

I did the AI thing when Midjourney first came around and before I knew better (I didn’t really look into anything around it I just went ‘oh cool AI images’ like so many people). I wouldn’t touch that sort of thing now.

I’m kinda in the same boat as some others have echoed, I kinda dislike PBs in general. Most of the time it’s the last step on the process and I rarely find something that truly matches what I was thinking of.

@Tez Yeah, I feel like we should be crotchety and stuck in our ways (in our rocking chairs on the front porch) about “pb/played by” versus “faceclaim.” >.>

@Faraday said in World Tone / Feeling:

The important thing is to set expectations.

Agreed. Even the most well-thought-out story-based consequence can feel like a capricious punishment rather than an interesting story moment if there’s no communication and the player is blind-sided.

I think a lot of expectations seem reasonable on the surface–if games happened in a vacuum or were run by robots. They do not and are not.

I think everyone is happier in the long run if when they notice that they do not get a response in the amount of time before they start to feel resentful and this seems to be the rule rather than the exception either they need to accept that and play with what they have or it is time to move on.

Staying while mad and steeping in resentment poisons the experience even when it is your turn, and can also affect everyone you are around too. It doesn’t really matter why. If the Could/Should isn’t happening for you, it probably isn’t personal (unless thats your usual experience across different gamerunners and genres, in which case perhaps some introspection is needed). But it is good to make some realistic expectations shifts in how much mental energy and time you want to invest in a game where for whatever reason there’s a mismatch in what you get vs what you feel you’re giving.

And sometimes players need time off to recover from a previous bad experience elsewhere. Few things kill staff or storytelling morale (or player morale) than a player vomiting game trauma dumping all over them and having a huge chip on their shoulder about how other people have wronged them elsewhere and are unable to interact without mentioning it frequently.

… You could have all the names meaning something to do with impermanence: TransitoryFruitBat, HarkingVagrant, GoogleProject.

@Faraday said in Best Games with Roster Characters?:

Ares also has a partial FFG Plugin based around the Genesys system. I don’t know how well it would adapt to L5R but you could probably at least steal some of the dice code.

I think you could probably steal most of the code. I just looked at it on Github and I think it mostly does what you want already, the code work would be reducing it down from 6 types of dice to 2.

Genesys has 6 dice types (Boost, Ability, Proficiency, Setback, Difficulty, and Challenge), where L5R only has 2 (Ring and Skill). Advantages (the L5R version of Talents) are pretty easy to implement too, as I believe the majority of them just let you reroll 2 of your dice in specific situations.

@somasatori said in The 3-Month Players:

@Pavel said in The 3-Month Players:

@Faraday said in The 3-Month Players:

TV shows and novels don’t tend to have much (if any) BarRP

… what about Cheers?

How can I play my mysterious, be-trenched, katana-wielding cyber drifter if everyone knows my fucking name??

a man is standing at a bar talking to a group of men sitting at tables .

@L-B-Heuschkel Funnily enough, I worked with Raph for years when I worked at SOE, and he was doing Star Wars Galaxies. He’s a smart cookie. Knows his shit backwards and forwards.

@Raistlin Totally does. Very cool. If I have free time (which is a luxury these days) I’ll be sure and check it out when it opens.

@Ominous said in Lords and Ladies Game Design:

@Rucket Could you elaborate on what you mean by “basic House development”?

Apologies at the insane delay I don’t check this place daily. Anyway I liked the basic concept that Arx had of domains and I would enjoy seeing projects people in the house could work on to improve areas of their domain over time. I don’t know that I have any super specific things in mind off the top of my head right now.

@Floof said in Games we want, but will almost certainly never have:

I have no idea how it’d work but I’ve always kind of wanted a game inspired by Ark: Survival Evolved/Ascended

If you want dinosaurs, go play a WoD game.

a man playing drums with the word travis behind him

@MisterBoring said in The Magicians:

As far as magic school subgenre of stuff, there are examples of that I do enjoy. Most recently the anime / manga series Mashle. I’ve just never been able to get into the Magicians for whatever reason.

I love Mashle so gd much

@Pavel & @Prototart

There is a game for that particular group:
450ca387-acd0-48f6-8e38-b2389db9d2fe-katanastrenchcoats_cover_feature.png

@Coin I was not aware of that. Definitely something to look at next time I peruse Ares games.

I don’t think this person posts here (Cayric? You out there?), but if they are… ❤ ❤

I’m having one of those nice moments as a storyteller where something I just randomly dropped in a scene on a whim has ballooned into a wee plot, and one of the players swept up in the story happily surprised me and tied the whole thing back into the metaplot in such a way that it even filled in a plothole for me. 🙂

@Tez said in Metaplot: What and How:

How often did you get players running things?

I don’t remember off-hand, but I’d say it was probably somewhere around 75-25 Staff-run and player-run for straight up combat scenes. But this could also be because I had just fallen in love with the FS3 combat system and was running a ton of scenes.

Seeding plot points to PrPs has to be done carefully, and if I’m being blunt, only with trusted plot-runners. On The Savage Skies we had a few player-run-plots that went off the rails and had to be reined back in via minor retcons. I would only provide metaplot seeds to plot-runners who have demonstrated a good handle on the basic setting, and only then after having an explicit back-and-forth conversation so that they knew what they were introducing and at least some of why they were introducing it.

@Tez said in Metaplot: What and How:

Did you get a feel from players or any feedback as to how the political side worked for them?

There were certainly players who were chasing that side of things pretty hard. Interestingly, it was particularly the players who were on the side gaining power who were chasing after it, because they knew they weren’t doing anything, and yet their side was still gaining power and influence and they wanted to know who was doing it and why. Knowing players in general, I expect that they would have found the person who was gathering the power and done their best to shut them down – and I think they would have succeeded, but it would have caused a power vacuum in the Crown Council that would have caused short-term chaos in the war effort (but probably would have come out ahead in the long term).

@Tez said in Metaplot: What and How:

TWOP definition

I had only tangentially heard of this source (Television Without Pity?). I think that my definitions came from working in gaming companies (tabletop and video) where there are some things that are immutable or relatively immutable (setting) and some things that can change with the story being told (metaplot). Looking at the wikipedia definition of metaplot, I don’t think that I disagree with the first two sentences at all:

The metaplot (also, metastory) is the overarching storyline that binds together events in the official continuity of a published role-playing game campaign setting, also defined as an “evolving history of a given fictional universe”. Major official story events that change the world, or simply move important non-player characters from one place to another, are part of the metaplot for a game.

I definitely think that that’s talking about metaplot – the events taking place in the setting that connect all the various storylines going on at once – rather than setting – the details of the world where the action is taking place – by my definitions.