MU Peeves Thread
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@Kestrel Your comment about them being an encouragement to buy things up immediately when you have to wait for the cooldown anyway is spot on. In every game I’ve played that had cooldown mechanics I can remember people engineering their purchases and their XP totals to make sure they could drop the request as soon as <thing> came off CD, regardless of whether it made sense in the context of what their characters were getting up to in game.
I admit I’m not a fan of cooldown mechanics generally, but I also don’t play a lot of games that have a highly granular progression system like the one you’re describing, and they may be a better idea where raising Strength 1 point a week for ~3 months is a plausible thing for characters to do. It feels like a strictly mechanical gating might be the more practical sort in that situation, where probably 20+ characters are all raising at least one thing once per week, or more if the XP gain rate permits it – anything dependent on staff to review and OK those 1-point-per-week gains seems as though it would very quickly devolve into either rubber stampery or staff madness, maybe both.
I do think that if you’re going to do extra progression for appropriate RP, you may want to have some sort of randomized scheme to determine if it occurs, just to deflect any potential accusations of “well, of course staff always give a point to X, they love that player” … which there probably will be anyway.
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If you don’t want people buying skills mid-event in order to increase rolls, just make a rule about that. You can’t do an xp spend to buy a skill that has already been called for by a gm.
If you want people to justify their xp choices with rp logs or something, well - stop. It’s not reasonable.
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@hellfrog said in MU Peeves Thread:
If you want people to justify their xp choices with rp logs or something, well - stop. It’s not reasonable.
Depends on the system. Raising PUNCH, sure. Gaining an ENTIRE ARMY with Followers? Maybe a log about it.
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I agree with a lot of the takes here, particularly the ones around the impact of XP spend mechanics on neurospiciness.
I’m also one of those guys who really hates someone coming into a scene with a 2 Firearms and then suddenly having a 4 when they find out that shooting a gun is critical to the scene.
I’ve previously been of the opinion that setting your cooldown to about the frequency of XP drops (on games where XP is a weekly/monthly/daily/whatever occurrence) was the way to go, so that people could keep up with spending their weekly XP as it came in, but if they wanted to store XP, they couldn’t bank a bunk and plop it down all at once during a scene. But, as mentioned above, that runs into problems with ADHD and other neurospiciness (it’s not great for my OCD either because I feel like I’m “slipping” if I don’t do it at the same time each week, because I can’t ever get the hours I lost between the cooldown ending and my actual spend back).
I’m now coming around to the thought that (for FS3), the solution may be a 1-day cooldown for weekly XP (and a high XP pool cap, like 20ish). So yeah, someone can pick up a brand new skill (for 1 XP) or go from 1 to 2 (again for 1 XP) during a scene if they want to, but they can’t jump from 5 to 6, say. But if they’ve forgotten for a couple of weeks, they can go back over the next week and spend that XP one per day, and unless they’ve really been ignoring XP (like for 5 months), they won’t actually lose the XP. Should help out with the feeling that you need to “keep up” because if you forget for a couple of days, you can just spend immediately and your cooldown will be over before the next XP is given out. There’s still some waiting if you’re way back, but it shouldn’t be as impactful if you can spend XP every day if you’ve got a stash instead of having to wait a week.
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What if a server has a special room (OOC makes the most sense, but I could also work with the right flavor) that one has to be in to spend XP? Then people couldn’t raise skills mid-scene without very obviously ducking out to do so.
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam
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Is raising a skill mid-scene really that rampant of a problem that we really need to twist ourselves into knots over this? Like, do people do this for real or is this some mythologized outlier situation? Rather than preemptively punish everyone for one theoretical idiot, why not simply toss out that idiot if and when this occurs?
I gotta tell you, I was just in a scene rolling quite possibly my highest skill the entire time… and I still (hilariously, in a fun way) got my ass kicked by the dice. Specifically, basically a huge chicken attacked my ass. You can raise a skill all you want. It’s no guarantee.
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tbh i just can’t bring myself to care that much about mid-scene skill raises. like, it’s not like they’re sneaking it for free, they’re still spending the xp. they’ve presumably been working on the skill, either on-cam or off. who’s to say that mid-swing isn’t when they break the arbitrary, artificial threshold of skill level 3 to 4 in swording?
i know there were absolutely mid-scene skill raises happening plenty on arx and i think it just wasn’t a big deal in the end. (although a vague memory of someone asking for a mid-scene train to make the cost cheaper was p funny.)
she/her | playlist
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@Ominous said in MU Peeves Thread:
What if a server has a special room (OOC makes the most sense, but I could also work with the right flavor) that one has to be in to spend XP? Then people couldn’t raise skills mid-scene without very obviously ducking out to do so.
I feel like, if you’re running a game that allows players to raise whatever they like whenever they like – which you are if this is a potential issue – then probably either:
- The things players can buy can influence the dice and might swing the results, but are generally not things that would completely change the complexion of a scene – you can get extra points in your Sword skill right before you duel a bad guy who fights with a sword of flame, but Fire Immunity is off the table.
Or else:
- The things players can buy can completely change the complexion of a scene and you’ve decided to embrace that and run with it.
And in either case I’m not sure adding a step like this is really the best use of your time. I’ve seen games that have this (or similar schemes, like time delays between when you buy something and when it shows up on your sheet), and for things like an intensely competitive PvP-focused game I could see it making sense, but generally I don’t think I’d bother.
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@helvetica said in MU Peeves Thread:
Is raising a skill mid-scene really that rampant of a problem that we really need to twist ourselves into knots over this? Like, do people do this for real or is this some mythologized outlier situation? Rather than preemptively punish everyone for one theoretical idiot, why not simply toss out that idiot if and when this occurs?
I gotta tell you, I was just in a scene rolling quite possibly my highest skill the entire time… and I still (hilariously, in a fun way) got my ass kicked by the dice. Specifically, basically a huge chicken attacked my ass. You can raise a skill all you want. It’s no guarantee.
Followup question - if a game makes it so you can only raise things via +job… do staffers processing those jobs also have to make sure you’re not doing any RP before raising stuff, lest THE DIRTY CHEATING happen, or whatever?
Mummy Pun? MUMMY PUN!
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If it wasn’t for the mid-scene “oh shit!” skill raise, my XP would never be spent.
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Wouldn’t the easiest way to avoid mid-scene advancement be to keep the commands to advance only in one specific OOC room on the grid? An XP Room.
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@Jennkryst said in MU Peeves Thread:
@helvetica said in MU Peeves Thread:
Is raising a skill mid-scene really that rampant of a problem that we really need to twist ourselves into knots over this? Like, do people do this for real or is this some mythologized outlier situation? Rather than preemptively punish everyone for one theoretical idiot, why not simply toss out that idiot if and when this occurs?
I gotta tell you, I was just in a scene rolling quite possibly my highest skill the entire time… and I still (hilariously, in a fun way) got my ass kicked by the dice. Specifically, basically a huge chicken attacked my ass. You can raise a skill all you want. It’s no guarantee.
Followup question - if a game makes it so you can only raise things via +job… do staffers processing those jobs also have to make sure you’re not doing any RP before raising stuff, lest THE DIRTY CHEATING happen, or whatever?
well i for one also hate XP spends only being allowed to happen via job. like if it’s because of code limitations or whatnot, i get it. but the sort of, like — staff has to approve each and every job because players can’t be trusted to spend XP even when those spends meat the mechanical requirements? hate it. (but i’m a hater.)
@howyadoin said in MU Peeves Thread:
If it wasn’t for the mid-scene “oh shit!” skill raise, my XP would never be spent.
this is honestly incredibly valid and i think probably something that is also forgotten. people can be RPing towards a thing and forget to hit spend until they’re reminded of the XP impact. which isn’t even people trying to cheese the system; it’s that people are naturally most reminded of the system when it’s the most relevant to them.
@MisterBoring said in MU Peeves Thread:
Wouldn’t the easiest way to avoid mid-scene advancement be to keep the commands to advance only in one specific OOC room on the grid? An XP Room.
this is what got suggested up-thread and my god i hate this too. this feels like SUCH an overcorrection to a fringe issue.
she/her | playlist
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@Roz said in MU Peeves Thread:
this feels like SUCH an overcorrection to a fringe issue.
Being that I’ve played on dozens of games that use XP rooms (without claiming they were a response to this fringe issue), I don’t really hate it.
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I am not actively on a game (sigh) however, I don’t see the harm in mid-scene skill raises. Most of those scenes, you are fighting an NPC. If it’s PvP, well who’s to say someone didn’t skill up just before entering the scene? Isn’t that basically the same? If you earned the XP when you spend it shouldn’t really matter. Or maybe I’m just not seeing why it does matter. What does it hurt or what does it do? Maybe I’m just not understanding the issue.
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@RightMeow I think it’s a situational fringe case. Example: A character with a bunch of saved XP is investigating a crime scene, their skill in Forensics is a 1, the lowest possible rating in the game. Prior to this they have not exhibited any affinity to the skill, any interest in the skill, and the only prior time they made a check against it, they failed. They have no narrative reference for raising the skill. They spend all of their saved XP during the scene and suddenly have Forensics 10, which per the system, would make them one of the Top 3 Forensics experts in the world. The character has effectively gone from barely functional in a skill to being part of the state of the art in the field, in a single scene.
This whole XP room thing or limits or whatever would be to deal with that sort of stuff. The kind of narrative record scratch that could come up in play.
I think the point is that for some people it’s narrative / immersion breaking to have characters do that. Which is fine. Everyone’s view of things is different.
Proud Member of the Pro-Mummy Alliance
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As a hobby we should be able to tell people who abuse rules (or rather, abuse lack of rules) to just fucking not.
If I ran a game and someone tried to raise their stat mid-scene or even mid-roll and got caught (not because I think it’s okay if you don’t get caught but because you can’t do anything if they aren’t caught) then even if I DON’T have a rule explicitly against it, it should largely be fine to say: ‘no, bad player, no biscuit’.
Changing an entire system (whether I agree with it or not due to other reasons) based on something like this is ridiculous; the kind of thing metaphors including babies and bathwater were made for.
(EDIT: also the kind of reasoning conservatives and would-be-progressives use to ban things – ‘oh, but it could be used to do this one thing, so we’re gonna ban the entire thing altogether’.)
In Occam I trust.
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There are various perspectives and experiences here and I think it’s swinging from big ol’ lawless crunchy traditional games where poor sportsmanship may be rampant, to ares games where by default you’re under 3 layers of thicc limits.
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@RightMeow said in MU Peeves Thread:
I am not actively on a game (sigh) however, I don’t see the harm in mid-scene skill raises. Most of those scenes, you are fighting an NPC. If it’s PvP, well who’s to say someone didn’t skill up just before entering the scene? Isn’t that basically the same? If you earned the XP when you spend it shouldn’t really matter. Or maybe I’m just not seeing why it does matter. What does it hurt or what does it do? Maybe I’m just not understanding the issue.
I can kinda see this being bigger deal in PvP settings, especially if you can see other PC sheets. Best of luck on those games, wherever they are.
