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Brainiacs of Freedom! ver 2.0 (ooc)


MarkK

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I keep meaning to bring this up:

Emissary's got a weakness to Daka Crystals.

Daka Crystals have "unique properties, making them useful in any number of super-science devices, including weapons, force shields, teleporters, and dimensional gates" and can "serve as focusing agents for a variety of forces."

They're more likely than not used in Doc's gravity belt and electromagnetic screwdriver.

I'm not saying being around Doc should trigger Emissary's Weakness, but he may feel a bit 'tingly' around him.

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They're also not exactly common, and I dunno that Doc would want to power his stuff with a non renewable resource that comes from this one place on Earth..

But fair enough, are the crystals exposed or contained within the devices?

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I'm just sort of, I guess to put it, annoyed at the idea of the weakness turning into "weakness; anyone with a science based device", which seems like a rather thorough hose not to mention worth well more points.

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I'm just sort of, I guess to put it, annoyed at the idea of the weakness turning into "weakness; anyone with a science based device", which seems like a rather thorough hose not to mention worth well more points.

How many times has his Weakness to Daka crystals come up in your nineteen months on this board?

Or his Vulnerability to Orichalcum weapons?

Or his "hyperadvanced composition makes medical treatment and conventional repair near impossible" Disability?

I admit I've not read every thread on the board, but I haven't seen any of those come up, which means you effectively got 10pp for free. Which is a tad unfair.

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Dude, there are quite a number of people who's weaknesses and the tradeoffs of their gear have not especially come up remotely simply for the way threads have hashed out, I'm fine with the Doc A thing, I'm not fine with the suggestion that my weakness become "everybody with a science based device" which seems to be what you're suggesting.

If you really want to discuss the idea of things one gets points for, how many people have taken device for their characters, and of those people, how many of them have been particularly impaired by the "it's a thing that they could lose and don't necessarily always have it on them" part of it for which they get cost breaks on powers, ultimately? The answer to note, is incredibly few indeed, but that's just how threads have gone. There's quite a variety of things like that, and it's just the nature of this kind of play when it's large groups over a forum, instead of someone's table top game. One might otherwise call it cheaper powers that are almost to basically always on hand, and that's not particularly fair either. But the counter of that is that a ref could entirely run a thread such that someone is in a situation where those aspects come up. That they don't is not anything on the player.

I put the drawbacks there, and a GM is free to use them in threads they run by their frequency however they so wish. I can't really control when they do or don't, and I've jumped blind into several ref controlled threads over the character's stint here.

You may as well otherwise go for no drawbacks or flaws, and that we houserule a power as a device to be a complication for all that the limitations of having one tend to come up.

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I'm not fine with the suggestion that my weakness become "everybody with a science based device" which seems to be what you're suggesting.

That's not what I'm suggesting. I'm not saying "Weakness to Daka Crystals = Weakness to Super-Science Devices." I am saying "Weakness to Daka Crystals = Should feel a bit queasy around some Super-Science Devices, and Weakness could kick in if those Devices are broken open and the crystals exposed, though given the high Toughness of Devices [10 + Device rank] that's still not gonna be terribly common."

Your other points seem a tad odd, since, as a Ref/Global Mod, they're exactly the sort of thing you should be enforcing/looking out for, and doing yourself in order to set a good example for other players.

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That's not what I'm suggesting. I'm not saying "Weakness to Daka Crystals = Weakness to Super-Science Devices." I am saying "Weakness to Daka Crystals = Should feel a bit queasy around some Super-Science Devices, and Weakness could kick in if those Devices are broken open and the crystals exposed, though given the high Toughness of Devices [10 + Device rank] that's still not gonna be terribly common."

Then we have no problem, but the first time I noted that was what you seemed to be saying, your reply was ultimately "it should come up more".

Your other points seem a tad odd, since, as a Ref/Global Mod, they're exactly the sort of thing you should be enforcing/looking out for, and doing yourself in order to set a good example for other players.

No, it's noting the nature of the beast over massive shared play over a forum, along with noting things that are ultimately true for those types of characters, and wondering thus why mine is so notable. We basically have several types of threads. In the pvp threads, no one really manages the environment, they basically show up to wail on each other, any heavy managing of the thread environment around them for flaw or weakness exploitation would come off a bit too much like trying to arrange things for the other fellow to get their face stepped on. Then there are the smaller group/two people interaction threads, which is again, just interaction. Then there are the interaction threads of such where one person is both playing their character and actively managing the thread, and already thus walking a really fine and difficult line as far as the other characters in thread being valid of themselves in the narrative, and not just appendages to function in whatever story someone wants to tell about their own character, that line beginning to vanish completely the more custom tailored to every aspect of one character that thread gets. Then there are the smaller controlled by ref without ref playing threads, where it would be more ideal to indeed so custom tailor, but we don't by comparison to all the other kinds get in a lot of these, especially as compared to, and finally, the large group run by a ref not playing threads, where aside from needing to keep track of a wide group of players, the nature of forum play requires keeping the thread itself to a certain degree adaptable and fluid in terms of its core narrative in being able to accomodate that players may simply vanish, and new ones need to be brought in to replace them, or that some may post really slowly and the thread needs to be kept moving for everyone else, or that something like, say, the player that was the centre of the thread getting banned for being a freak and the whole thing needing to be restarted. Tailoring a narrative to specifically incorporate someone's limitations thus in that kind of thread can be counter intuitive.

Within that, flaws, weaknesses and the like coming up as little as they do for everything from devices to drawbacks should be expected, and it's basically natural. You can either in response say we should junk the whole system and houserule devices besides, or you can take on faith that it's not as though players and refs intend for things to be as such, but that all the same there are alterations to how gameplay works out in venues like this that happen just for the venues being what they are, and that's just something to accept.

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I disagree. I don't buy that there's only "accept it or House Rule it." I can't accept that it's so insurmountable a task for five Refs to be able to look after ~35 characters and periodically ask, either in PM or in the OOC threads, whether or not any of their Drawbacks or Flaws (or Device discount) have come up, the same as we would any other rules issue.

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It could be ten refs and it would still be like that, in my experience. There's already quite a lot to do on every level to keep things going, and even just to make sure any given thread is working alright within an overall sense of setting trying to be maintained. And there is everything I mentioned above that shapes threads and how they play out as is. Anything beyond all of that is a bonus.

I'll leave it at that both my experience and perspective is different than yours on this issue, as far as the things that you get for large shared setting play, and the things you trade away for it as far as how you might make something go in table top.

In a lot of huge chat/forum type places, many have ultimately after several years of hand wringing and talks on this very thing ended up widescale restricting merits/flaws, drawbacks, whatever you want to call them, to the point of them basically exiting play, or they settle for disallowing the ones they find stupid, and otherwise accepting as they can what remains for what it is. The notion of the fallacy of the unexcluded middle, as it were, has never really worked out.

We ocassionally have very different views on game theory Doc, it's come up before. I'd really like to otherwise get back to this thread going along.

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Late April or early May looks good. Nothing much happening there.

For those interested, I'm setting this for Friday, May 8th. After the Genderswitch wackiness Doc was in (and after the HUGE EXPLOSION in Riverside), but before Quark's trip to a mysterious antiques store.

Besides, what else are brainiacs like us gonna do on a Friday night? ;)

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