Back to classes, after spring break. The day before resumption two colleagues' fathers fell ill (one died, one multiple strokes), so we've all been scrambling to help out. It is nice working at a place where I know if anything blew up in my life, thirty people would pick up anything I dropped.
I've succeeded at applying for a permanent position, which is replacing my temporary position (and at a higher pay rate) - but someone has appealed the selection process. Unlikely to change the outcome, but it does delay it.
@BESW I believe our state has recently passed legislation providing a tax credit for those who document time caring for close relations. Though I wish the tax code weren't this country's primary expression of commonly-held values and priorities, I do appreciate it making the list.
re: cyberpunk dystopia; living in it; neat: Lost Satellite Just Reappeared and No One Knows What Happened to It http://gizmodo.com/japan-s-lost-black-hole-satellite-just-reappeared-and-n-1768036648
@SevenSidedDie There's a mod-attention flag I left on one of your comments to call your attention to something it seems you might've forgotten to do. It can be cleared away now.
So here's what the Editing Help says:
When should I edit posts?
Any time you feel you can make the post better, and are inclined to do so. Editing is encouraged!
Some common reasons to edit are:
to fix grammatical or spelling mistakes
to clarify the meaning of a post witho...
@doppelgreener It took me a few seconds to understand the flag, but yeah, there were a few minutes delay between me leaving the comment and following up with a close. Thanks!
@SevenSidedDie haha, when the question was still open i figured it'd read as "you forgot to close this", but when it was closed i became alarmed it'd read as "did you really mean to close this??"
@doppelgreener Yep, I went through those possibilities backwards, looking at the flag and then looking at the context it would have been flagged in. Thank goodness for timestamps on comments and post edits!
We had an event where an ancient warehouse of those crazy mage-hunter constructs were stored, and a machine tried to poison a whole town with biological agents, all while one of the constructs tried to kill people (and us)
Though the most fun I've ever had as a M:tA player was when I made a "soft sphere" character (Euthanatos with Entropy/Spirit/Prime/Life) that used it to create advantageous situations, even in combat.
In the D&D group I currently GM, a couple players left recently, and I've been wondering how exactly to handle the situation. The two who left did so on rather negative terms with at least seven of the other ten players, so many of our proposed solutions conflict with the wishes of some in the gr...
I once played in a game of 12. We had to split the group into two DMs. Eventually we split to three dungeons and I became a DM. The party would split between the dungeons and reunite at the end. It was epic
I agree. More than 6 and you need to consider if you'd be better off splitting up. Naturally everyone would like to be in the limelight, but with too many players, it gets difficult to balance and it becomes inevitable that someone gets bored.
I prefer groups of 4-5 myself. I have 6 currently, with the occasional non-regular that makes it 7, but that's only when I need the non-regular to drive some part of the story.
Unbound RPG's new update is all kinds of meaty. There's video of actual play, which I haven't seen yet; a giveaway contest; and some excerpts from the rules.
They're doing something really cool that I haven't seen done before: when you pick abilities for your character, you have to answer related questions, e.g. how you used those before.
So if you take Wall of Steel, you have to answer the following: "One time, you protected someone with this and you wish you hadn’t. Who was it?"
@BESW I don't get how that new skill can actually be applied, or more accurately, I don't see any limitations on it other than not affecting people's free will
@trogdor It's similar to using Notice to establish that things are true about a scene.
Notably, though, it's not as good for timely stuff. Nudge is about setting up dominoes. If you choose the wrong things to manipulate, you don't get the results you wanted.
And it only works for things that actually have a random element; if nothing's left to chance, Nudge is useless.
So the more careful your enemy is, the harder it is to use Nudge in big ways.
And the less likely a particular outcome is, the more difficult to roll to make it happen.
EG, if you're up against someone who's careless with his gun, you can easily use Nudge to make it misfire or jam.
But you can't do that in response to him firing; you have to do it on your turn before he tries to shoot you. And if he's a professional, or if he just checked the weapon, your roll will be harder, if not outright impossible.
(And notice that she only has a +3 in Nudge. Her Cheater mode blew all her skill points so she couldn't improve anything that wasn't just reinforced by another mode.)
You get 30 skill points to spend at chargen, and you can take skills more than once by putting them in multiple modes. Each extra mode it's in gives you +1 to the skill and the skill's cap is 2 higher than the rank of the highest mode it's in.
In all seriousness, "fruitful void" is an RPG design term for a narrative space the game leaves free of mechanical influence.
The idea is that sometimes you get better play when you leave a particular thing open for free-form creativity on the part of the players.
In D&D, "why do you adventure?" is usually a fruitful void. In Masters of Umdaar you're asked specifically to mechanise it in the form of an aspect phrase which starts I must...
Ok. I like the first two stunts. I am... not sure that Raycia always getting the choice will be fun for me.My primary concern will be: we go from mechanic to mechanic and I'm wondering "??? wait what's going on, how does that person get to go first" - lightning reflexes at least means "you go first because you're very quick to react." Makes sense, I can understand that one in the narrative.
My secondary is that it's fun seeing the athletic person go first in physical conflict and etc.
I'm totally down to see it play out and see if I don't have to be concerned at all.
But I'm keen to know what's happening that means X is going first instead of the normal choice, Y.
@doppelgreener You may have noticed that she's got only a high concept. We're trying that "play to discover the character" thing, and that includes not hashing out every detail about how she does what she does until she does it. If there's a problem in the execution, I should hope you feel free to say "I'm not happy about how that's working, can we fiddle with it?"
@Golokopitenko The "Pirate" package comes complete with malnutrition, communicable diseases, a severely non-OSHA-compliant workspace, constant paranoia, and a lifelong exile from your homeland. You get what you pay for.
@BESW I understand. As a german, what especially irks me (though thats also the case with Open/Libre Office) is that the formulas are language bound. In the german version, I cannot use "=Sum()" and need to use "=SUMME()"
@Golokopitenko In most live performances that are trying to convey information (radio in particular), the rule is "Tell 'em what you're gonna tell 'em. Tell 'em. Tell 'em what you told 'em."
So here's what the Editing Help says:
When should I edit posts?
Any time you feel you can make the post better, and are inclined to do so. Editing is encouraged!
Some common reasons to edit are:
to fix grammatical or spelling mistakes
to clarify the meaning of a post witho...
