What topics would you like to see?

[Ralph]

Here is a forum for you to tell us what sorts of topics you would like to see us write about.

[The Spirit]

Feeding, the 1-a-Week Willpower Refresh and Herd, please!

Thoughts in general, the current mechanics, what's going on that we get Willpower from Feeding Tiles but not Herd, how much needs to be described or role-played versus being hand-waved or implicitly successful, or anything else please.


Done! See it here: http://masquerade.endogaming.net/forum/ ... 29&t=18662

[Ted]

Wooj level.

[MorganS]

Downtimes.
- Staff’s opinion on how important they are
- Ideal ratio of downtime to uptime activity in a plot
- Other things I’m sure…

[Isabella]

Influences.
How they work. How to use them. How to raise them. How to loose them. How important they are in terms of game play and doing things.

This is an area I suck at. I admit to it. I haven't a clue as to how to use or raise them or gain a level of one that I don't already have. Staffs view on them would be interesting.

[dominic]

Influences.
How they work. How to use them. How to raise them. How to loose them. How important they are in terms of game play and doing things.

This is an area I suck at. I admit to it. I haven't a clue as to how to use or raise them or gain a level of one that I don't already have. Staffs view on them would be interesting.

This was one pet project of mine from when I was on Staff that obviously never got done: writing up a set of sample actions, such as how to obtain a new Influence, a rough idea of the relative difficulties and tasks needed of getting levels above 2, an example of how to attack someone's influence, etc.

Now Staff has changed a bit since then, and I'm more than curious to hear the current opinions on this.

[Glen]

The purpose of a rules system and the major current and previous rules pitfalls in BAM.

[Aoife]

Since I was just asking about this I'd love to hear your ideas on crafting rules and whether or not you've got thoughts on things like extended actions (which maybe you really need to be a Mage: The Ascension player to love, I get that).

[The Spirit]

Influences.
How they work. How to use them. How to raise them. How to loose them. How important they are in terms of game play and doing things.

This is an area I suck at. I admit to it. I haven't a clue as to how to use or raise them or gain a level of one that I don't already have. Staffs view on them would be interesting.

Similarly:

The role of normal human people in this game, as individuals and as the Mob, the Masses, the MostPeople, the kine, the NPCs we might consider filler or backdrop for everywhere, etc.

AND

The "World of Darkness" as you see it, maybe both as individuals and as a Staff consensus.
What happens there? What's more normal? What's less normal? How should we adjust our perspectives about the state of the world when playing there? How much are parodies of and homages to real horrible, messed-up things present alongside or in lieu of those real horrible, messed-up things?

Both questions really boil down to:
If I put on Google Glass, set it to show me your vision of WoD and walk around, what do I see? What do I hear? What's happens?

[Ted]

If I put on Google Glass, set it to show me your vision of WoD and walk around, what do I see? What do I hear? What's happens?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVgl1HOxpj8

[Isabella]

For me these are things that took me a long time as a player to actually learn and I'm still learning them but they are very near and dear to my heart as a player and as someone who runs games.

Trust and Communication:
~ Between Players
~ Between Players and STs
~ Between STs
~ Knowing, Understanding, Respecting and Communicating Boundaries
~ Concerns Regarding the Game and How to Bring Them Up

[Dale]

What I like the most about the WoD theme is the potential it has to take a genuine theme that parallels the real world and takes it to it's furthest extreme.

An Apathetic world as antagonist: The World in all its beauty and in all its flaws is dying and nobody particularity cares. The beautiful and profane have lost all meaning and are treated as equal. Nothing is sacred or revered anymore. Both nature and people are resources to be exploited. Faith is a mechanism to control the soul and science I a mechanism of controlling the environment. The decision was made and the die was cast and there is nothing you can do about it. Nothing will ever change or get better. What do the people think about being a drone in this global shopping mall that is crumbling down under the weight of its own neglect? Well, to quote George Carlin when asking a similar question, "They think it's JUST FUCKING DANDY!!" Dealing with this bullshit grinding on you every day is your struggle as a player.

Faith: You are alone. I like things things that remind the denizens of the WoD that they are specs of dust in the scheme of things. There is no god. There is no plan or divinity anything looking out for them. God and divinity if it does exist NEVER manifests itself to you in an intelligible or noticeable way; and faith really is that. Those of faith should forever be disappointed and if they solder on long enough they might get a scrap of hope... that may be more in their head than reality.

Mystery and terror: The world fucked up as it is is beautiful and mysterious. The little that we do know only seems to remind us off all that still resists out there that is still a mystery. Sometimes the mystery is beautiful and sometimes it wants to kill you for alien and unknowable reasons. I like creatures and phenomena that don't have a clear explanation for what they are or why they are happening. They cannot be reasoned with nor can they be defeated in martial combat. There are plenty of the little crunchy plots to be sure, but occasionally there is something that comes rolling in and there is nothing you can do about it and going to ground or running are your only option. Or better yet, your options are death or sacrificing something or someone important.

The no-win: I love no -win situations because they allow for more long term and sustained internal torsion. Sometimes life doesn't play fairly and you end up with a shit sandwich, be it the result of en external threat or your own dumb ass. Both choices are bad, electing to do nothing is even worse, and you don't have the time to come up with something better. The best RP I have ever gotten has not been from the initial choice I made, but with dealing with the consequences of that choice.

Themes for vampire:
- Mistakes have serious and lethal long term consequences.
- Getting close to something only means it will hurt more when it eventually dies and you survive.
- Followup, Is mere survival worth anything? What good is survival if you do nothing with it? A amazing Nos theme that I only got to explore a little as Fox.
- Are you a person still and how should you live your life?
- You are a slave to entities that hold power of gods and are petty as men. No force can coarse them, no prison can hold them and no action can shame them. The sect you belong to is the principle antagonist in your story and your elders DON'T have your best interests at heart. The theme of the game becomes, how you work your way around the politics and still live.

[Professor Thompson]

As a player the topics that seem the most confusing to me are lores and influences. I think I finally have an understanding of how the whole influence thing works, but it took me a couple of years to figure it out. The whole lore concept still seems confusing to me, even after all this time. For example, during the Hunter plot my character was desperately trying to learn Imbued and/or Hunter lore. When I asked staff about how I could go about getting this lore, I was given three different answers by three different staff members. So I went to the staff member who was running the plot and asked for clarification. What I was told was that there has to be a source for me to learn the lore from. And so my character spent a great deal of time trying to find a source for the lore. When I was finally able to locate a source for the lore and get that character to share some of their knowledge with me during rp I was told my staff that all of the knowledge that I learned during rp did not qualify for lore and that I would need to submit a down time action stating who I was learning the lore from and that character would also need to submit a down time action.

To make a long story short. By the time that all of this conflicting information was resolved, both of my sources for the lore had become burnt out on the plot and had switched characters. And they had no interest in submitting down time actions involving this plot. I even tried to get creative and submitted a couple of different down time actions involving special abilities and/or other ways of obtaining the lore. In the end, nothing seemed to work, and so I just decided to wing it.

What made this situation even more frustrating was the fact that in the end, even though I had obtained the knowledge in game, that knowledge didn't qualify as lore. This whole experience has taught me that lore really doesn't count for much. The plot was resloved though rp, which is pretty much how everything gets resolved anyway. So my question to staff is this, if lores don't have much of an impact on how a plot actually works out, why should I bother to learn them in the first place?