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Post by ericfromnj on Dec 2, 2012 19:31:15 GMT -8
Who cares if it is the first game this guy played? Punch the whiner in the throat and kick his ass out.
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HyveMynd
Supporter
Dirty hippie, PbtA, Fate, & Cortex Prime <3er
Posts: 2,273
Preferred Game Systems: PbtA, Cortex Plus, Fate, Ubiquity
Currently Playing: Monsterhearts 2
Currently Running: The Sprawl
Favorite Species of Monkey: None
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Post by HyveMynd on Dec 2, 2012 19:57:05 GMT -8
OK. Now that I've listened to the section of the podcast being referenced by ericfromnj, I have a few thoughts.
If the player wants to have his player go off to the next town to buy some magical weapon, the let the player have his character go off to the next town. But make it real for the fiction of the game. Tell the player how long it'll take his character to get to the next town over, buy the item, and then travel back to the original city. Something like two weeks maybe. Tell the player that his character will be gone for two weeks of game time, and give him the change to persuade the other characters to go with him on his shopping trip.
If all the characters decide to go, then that's what the game becomes; a side trip to the next town over to purchase a special weapon, and then a big old mess for them to deal with when they come back to the home city. But if none of the other players have their characters go with this guys on his shopping trip? Oh well then. The player can either have his character change their mind and stay with the group, or go off on the journey by himself. If that happens, have the player make a new character, or give him a major NPC to play as while his primary character is gone.
Don't shaft the guy too hard though by having nothing happen to his primary character. Give him a few one on one sessions with his primary character if you can, or at the very least give him some play-by-post RP exchanges over email or IM. Nothing too exciting of course. But after his shopping trip is over and he returns to the primary group, his character is going to have to deal with all the fallout his departure caused. It sounds like he's leaving the town at a critical moment in the story. Show him that MMOs are different from table top games. Show him that the rest of the world doesn't go on pause just because his character decided to go off on a little side quest. His character's actions have consequences, and abandoning the rest of the group at a crucial time just so he can go shopping for that +5 sword is going to have ramifications. He's got the sword (or whatever it was) that he wanted so damn bad, but was it worth the cost he paid for it?
I'm hoping this will cause one of two things to happen. Perhaps the player will realize that sometimes you have to bow to the will of the group even when you really want to do something else. He'll possibly have his character stay with the group to finish the adventure and forego the shopping trip. If not, he might decide to stick with the new character he's playing in the interim instead of going back to his original character once the shopping trip is done. Maybe the other characters give the primary character so much shit for abandoning them that he has that character walk off into the sunset for good (causing the player to make a new character). Or maybe the player will use this opportunity to role play. His character might feel so guilty about flaking out that he spends the rest of the adventure trying to make it up to the other characters.
Either way, give the player the choice, make his choice matter, but show him that his choices will have consequences on the game. Possibly to the point that his character gets written out of the story.
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Post by Kainguru on Dec 3, 2012 5:49:57 GMT -8
Behaviour change = behaviour modification. Take your pick: Classical conditioning : pavlov's dog Operant conditioning : positive reinforcement ie reward and punish CBT : change the way he thinks through discourse Neuro Linguistic Programming : being a sneaky fuck and programming the behaviour you want through discrete suggestions that exploits certain receptive neurological pathways Hypnotherapy : straight up as read (my preferred option) MJ12 Manchurian Programming : strap the fucker down in a room full of white noise, administer LSD liberally and wipe his personality and replace it with the one you want Traveller and magic and systems: been done already by mongoose. Hate to bang the same drum : Traveller Judge Dredd and Strontium Dog both have explicit rules for magic using the traveller mechanics. Sci fi rules and weapons in a fantasy setting? I'll just point to Barrier Peaks (D&D meets Metamorphosis Alpha - 'nuff said). What was missed in the podcast was not just boiling a system down to mechanics but also tweaking/dialling it to suit the genre and flavour. Eg: deadly combat increase health decrease damage or viva versa. Star Wars d20 already reworked hit points as health and vitality - a brilliant and elegant solution to that particular problem. Why would one want to hack/modify/reskin a system/mechanic? Same reason people used to hack/mod/reskin doom/quake/oblivion/never winter nights/unreal . . . Because they can and they want to make it 'their own'. Aaron
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Post by Todd on Dec 3, 2012 7:38:27 GMT -8
So Jib kept some artist on a leash in his garage?
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Post by Kainguru on Dec 3, 2012 8:13:39 GMT -8
So Jib kept some artist on a leash in his garage? "Get the Gimp"
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freyki
Apprentice Douchebag
Posts: 86
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Post by freyki on Dec 3, 2012 8:18:37 GMT -8
The hosts talked about employing writers, artists, and editors. The only thing they might have missed was someone to do layout. From what I've gathered, those folks are pretty important.
But I'm not in the publishing business, so I might be talking out of my hat.
-Freyki-
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Post by Kainguru on Dec 3, 2012 8:29:06 GMT -8
The hosts talked about employing writers, artists, and editors. The only thing they might have missed was someone to do layout. From what I've gathered, those folks are pretty important. But I'm not in the publishing business, so I might be talking out of my hat. -Freyki- I friend back in Oz, she was a publishing layout artist - yeah they're pretty important Aaron
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Post by Stu Venable on Dec 3, 2012 10:47:47 GMT -8
I thought I'd mentioned layout artists on more than one occasion. If I didn't I was remiss.
I can do layout (learned it in college), but if someone who knows what they're doing does it, it looks much better...
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freyki
Apprentice Douchebag
Posts: 86
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Post by freyki on Dec 3, 2012 11:19:41 GMT -8
Oh yeah, you totally did Stu. I remember now.
My bad!
-Freyki-
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Post by jazzisblues on Dec 3, 2012 12:18:07 GMT -8
So Jib kept some artist on a leash in his garage? Uhm ... no ... just ... no ... JiB
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willh
Journeyman Douchebag
Posts: 220
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Post by willh on Dec 3, 2012 14:56:38 GMT -8
So Jib kept some artist on a leash in his garage? Uhm ... no ... just ... no ... JiB So..., you had him in a cage?
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HyveMynd
Supporter
Dirty hippie, PbtA, Fate, & Cortex Prime <3er
Posts: 2,273
Preferred Game Systems: PbtA, Cortex Plus, Fate, Ubiquity
Currently Playing: Monsterhearts 2
Currently Running: The Sprawl
Favorite Species of Monkey: None
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Post by HyveMynd on Dec 3, 2012 18:13:17 GMT -8
I forgot to mention that the exchange between Stu and JiB at the end of the episode had me crying with laughter. Stu's constant response of "Why?" was hilarious.
I'm going to back up JiB on what he said about boiling away everything from a game except mechanics though. I don't think he meant reducing a game to only the dice mechanics, but rather just stripping away all the setting and setting specific terms from a game. You could totally use D&D 3.x to run a sci-fi space opera game. Laser guns? Just use the mechanics for bows. You have ranges, damage potential, cost, weight, etc. All the mechanical elements you need for it to function in the game. In a fantasy setting those mechanics get wrapped up in a narrative "skin" that turns them into bows and crossbows. In a sci-fi game those mechanics get wrapped in a skin that turns them into laser guns. Done.
Is it more work than just using a system that's already skinned as a sci-fi setting? Yes. Should you reskin or modify system A to run a game of setting B just because you can? Not necessarily. Some people like pulling stuff apart to see how it works. Other people don't care how something works, only that it does.
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Post by fray on Dec 3, 2012 19:21:02 GMT -8
Yeah, Stu you mentioned us graphic monkeys a few times during the show.
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Post by jazzisblues on Dec 4, 2012 6:13:58 GMT -8
Uhm ... no ... just ... no ... JiB So..., you had him in a cage? Stil no. JiB
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Post by jazzisblues on Dec 4, 2012 6:14:38 GMT -8
I forgot to mention that the exchange between Stu and JiB at the end of the episode had me crying with laughter. Stu's constant response of "Why?" was hilarious. I'm going to back up JiB on what he said about boiling away everything from a game except mechanics though. I don't think he meant reducing a game to only the dice mechanics, but rather just stripping away all the setting and setting specific terms from a game. You could totally use D&D 3.x to run a sci-fi space opera game. Laser guns? Just use the mechanics for bows. You have ranges, damage potential, cost, weight, etc. All the mechanical elements you need for it to function in the game. In a fantasy setting those mechanics get wrapped up in a narrative "skin" that turns them into bows and crossbows. In a sci-fi game those mechanics get wrapped in a skin that turns them into laser guns. Done. Is it more work than just using a system that's already skinned as a sci-fi setting? Yes. Should you reskin or modify system A to run a game of setting B just because you can? Not necessarily. Some people like pulling stuff apart to see how it works. Other people don't care how something works, only that it does. What he said. JiB
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