Jig

Château de Lalune

You know I'm here. Am drunk and have plugged laptop into tv for higher quality of music. This means I'm using wireless keyboard so expect low quality from me. PM incoming shortly, mostly with neuroses. If you get character sheet, I'll either rate it D for drunk (I love how I can maybe get away with that shit, kinda) or not rate it which will mean I've spent enough time on it to not worry about influence of narcotics.

I wanted to do hashtags for notgming and kirahadntm99 but a) can't see text on screen with 20/19 vision filtered through drunk b) wasn't gonna bother with coding c) literally can't find hashtag on this keyboard.

Weird Roleplay Ideas You're Afraid To Pitch?

Mafia/Werewolf.

@gcold

I facking love Werewolf and have thought myself about trying a Werewolf game (in the past when I had time for this stuff), but I wasn't sure how it would actually translate to written fiction. I mean, the whole thing about Werewolf is the meta-level of "well yeah guys, she would say that", while meta-gaming is one of the cardinal sins of RPing. Did you have this figured out? Genuinely intrigued.

Wolf Manor

Are you anticipating using sheets? If so, I'll wait till we get a sheet through.

Right now we can all be glad that I'm not GMing the next one because sweet lordy jesus my idea was relying on all of you knowing Tennyson's The Lady of Shallot in intense detail (not that I'd've told you to google it, because spoilers) and not having seen Jonathan Creek. If you haven't read The Lady of Shallot, I recommend you go read the shit out of it (the 1842 version, please) right now this second. If you haven't seen Jonathan Creek, and especially if your name is Aunt Flavia, go download the shit out of it because it's possibly the most brilliant detective show of all time in the most quirkily, Britishly brilliant way possible.

Wolf Manor

I've done a bit of thinking and, though I still need to come up with a 10/10 motive, I have high hopes for Château de Lalune, assuming no one outbids me.

Confidence: 8/10

_{[sent via PM]}

@TheMaster99

All right. I'll put myself around an 8 or so.

@Kirah

*Jig comes up with idea that might work*
*Everybody else circumnavigates it entirely*

Can anybody offer more than 8/10? If not... how do Kirah and TM99 work out which should GM without revealing what they have planned?

Weird Roleplay Ideas You're Afraid To Pitch?

Bear with me:

Every player plays as another player playing a character the player they're playing as created. If enough of the community worked out which player was pretending to be which player, they'd be eliminated entirely, and whoever was playing as them (playing a character) would immediately skip to whoever their 'character' was playing. Obviously, this would all have to be filtered through proxy accounts (ideally, other members of the site).

The actual plot/setting/general content of the game was irrelevant, because I'm an idiot that doesn't think about anything.
Nowadays, I try to go for more normal murder mysteries, except no. They're all fucking carnage.

Wolf Manor

This post is rated D for drunk. I spent this evening with Jig's Extraordinarily Easily-Amused Partner and Lysistrata, also known as Dick Jokes, The Classical Play, and I needed wine to get through it.

I would be, but...but.
Lots of buts.

Perhaps not, because I can barely keep up with the one RP I have right now, but I just realised. God I forgot we were a murder mystery manor. That means our characters will die.

And I got so damn attached to everyone being around too and ;;
One little part of me wants to make it so nobody has to die (unless they have to leave, etc.)

@MyCatGinger

Tragic, I know. One of the key issues with Wolf was that I didn't wanna kill y'all, even though Jonas in particular was DYING to, well, be killed.

I guess I'll upgrade from "wouldn't mind" to "will unless someone else is extremely interested in GMing".

#MakeWolfManorGreatAgain #TM992016 #ThatIsntTheYear992016 #ThatIsALongTimeFromNow

P.S.: Why did I start doing these hashtags, exactly? I certainly don't know.

@TheMaster99

My influence.

Where I'm at:

I don't wanna just throw this at somebody else - especially having essentially bailed on something you trusted me on. Hopefully y'all see why it was a nightmare, but, still, I said I can make it work, and couldn't, which is really fuckin' devastating - especially when you see what delicious creepiness I had planned.

But equally, (as though it's up to me), I don't want somebody to feel 'burdened' with this, or though they're 'willing' to do it. We're only here because we want to be, and if a GM gives the impression that they're 'putting up with' this, my instinct is they're probably not the GM. I think I'd rate my own GM potential for whatever comes next at a 6.5/10. I have the kernel of an idea, and I want to see where it goes (in my own head) before I commit anything, but there is a kernel of an idea here, which may or may not blossom into something good or bad. If it wasn't good, I like to think you know I wouldn't submit it for you to play.

The 3.5 points I don't have out of 10 are based on my own GMing record on this: I couldn't sustain the energy in the face of rocking the boat and general bleurgishness. While I'd love nothing more than one of you to wholeheartedly take on a similar project, I would rather try again myself with what I currently have than for one of you to take it on anything less than whole-heartedly. We're a really great group that can pursue really great projects together, and stick with it - doing it 'for the sake of it', in my opinion, does a disservice to the really amazing precedents that Wolf and Woll have laid out for us.

I don't know what to suggest. At this stage, the only person unaccounted for is Cops, and hopefully he won't mind me assuming that perhaps he doesn't have the time to GM. So, broadly speaking, we know who is prepared to GM, and I think we largely want to have another go (if you don't, now is a fabulous time to say you don't want to / can't / won't - without being judged (at least by me)) at being murdered. If anybody does officially want to have a go, but they're too polite or not confident to put their name to it, now is absolutely the time to say. As I say, I don't remotely think I've 'nailed' this genre (though at one point I thought I perhaps had), and would be fucking ecstatic to see what one of you could do with it with a different approach: the drippy drunk part of me is pretty convinced we're in almost completely uncharted territory here and what we're doing is basically seminal in the (admittedly specific) school of murder-mystery RP's and I'm certain that this is the best group I've stuck with. What I really want is to be a player in your twisted imaginations, but I can offer 6-7/10 that my twisted imagination is worth another spin.

What I'm gonna suggest is that any GM, or combination of Co-GM's, puts their stake forth in terms of what they have to offer, out of 10. Kirah has nominated herself as a potential GM, while I reckon Ging, Flavs and TM99, though they've been reserved, have an imagination as twisted as Kirah's to put something really great out there if they have the time and the self-confidence. There's no great way to choose (last time I think it was me and Ging 'competing' very amicably for GMship) and no great way to suggest that you suspend whatever British ancestry you have and put your meat where your mouth is, but now is totally the time to do so.

I'm gonna suggest it come straight down to whoever says they have the confidence out of 10 to drive this thing. If you fail, no big whup (at least from me) - I couldn't get us to the end, and nor could Bliss - the main thing is everybody involved had fun (if not, I'd suggest you absent yourself at this late stage - thank you for persevering with us). What I can say is that, if my 6.5/10 somehow wins the day, I will not be recruiting from outside this group, and therefore if enough of you don't wish to take part (which will be no shade on you, and I can't emphasise this enough), I will not run the game. My running for GM is conditional on at least most of your participations, or an extremely confident direct recommendation from one, or, ideally, more of you. I have time for very few things in my life right now, and, although I'm considering re-allocating time to GMing Woof Manor, that offer does not extend to new players who don't have anything less than an excellent reference from one of you.

Jig's Confidence: 6.5/10

Please don't pitch confidence in the hopes you won't get it. I think we all trust each other here, so be honest about your confidence. If you fail, I will not judge you, and I'm probably the most judgemental person here. If you would prefer to stake your confidence/10 to me privately via PM, I'm happy to play receptionist on this occasion - if you 'win', I'll announce it.

I hope I'm not pressuring anybody here, but I've spent enough time around people being cagey and reserved when they're sitting on goldmines of brilliance to know that it's worth asking people to remove their respective lights from bushels before simply stampeding forth with whatever nonsense I have planned. Be bold. If you think you have a great idea, this is absolutely the group to try it out on, because we trust each other - correct me if I'm wrong.

@Kirah @TheMaster99 @AuntFlavia @MyCatGinger @CallTheCops @CorneredBliss
tagged for importance

god, I feel like a monster. I trust that you get what I mean by this without feeling pressured or scared off. blame my Britishness

Finance, Rewards, Income, Skill Levels

This strikes me as an attempt to balance characters. Sure you can have that Infinity + 1 sword crafted from the finest adamantite right off the bat, but then you can only afford armour woven from the less-than-finest sack cloth. In essence, doling out cash from the beginning as you describe is not terribly different to a skill point system designed to force players to specialise or become a Jack of All Stats.

I'm reminded of a school-based game I was once in a billion years ago, where every character had a stat total that had to be divvied up among exam results, extracurricular activities, and other completely external activities. What this basically meant was that every character would have strengths and weaknesses, which sounds fair, but, in my opinion, derails realism (which is something I tend to aim for); there are kids that breeze through school, getting great grades in everything and are the star striker of the football team and solo flautist in the orchestra. Is this because they work hard? Or maybe because they have psychotic helicopter parents and they're hugely stressed and are about to burn out? What about another kid who had a rough start in life, made all the right decisions and worked hard at school but still has a really mediocre statpool to show for it? How might they feel about the kid whose parents could afford private tuition? What might they have learned through their experience that the privileged kid didn't? The moment you apply arbitrary balancing mechanisms onto characters, I feel like a lot of this really human nuance is lost.

Clearly, nobody wants to play with an overpowered character, but 'more powerful than me' does not intrinsically mean overpowered. I suspect that when most games apply any kind of numbered values to characters, it's an attempt to stop people making OP characters and a disclaimer to stop people bitching that they feel that another character is overpowered. The thing is, where those stats are simply a reference, nothing stops anybody from playing overpowered anyway. If the GM wants to curtail overpowered characters, they need to communicate effectively from day one what constitutes a reasonable character and what constitutes an overpowered one, both via whatever sheets are being used and by indicating what the game is about and what sorts of things will work. Crucially, they should only admit players that "get" the game and whom they can trust to basically not abuse the privilege of being able to narrate their own story from their own perspective.

For me, there is very little correlation between video games and RPing. When a character in most fiction 'levels up', that's as much because of an emotional change rather than a physical change - the Eye of the Tiger training montage can only happen once a character has decided that they're actually really fucking determined / another character has agreed to teach them. The 'levelling up' is not just a device to make the character more powerful to progress the plot, but reveals something about the inner life of the character. By the same token, when a character acquires a new skill, that's frequently laying the seeds for a time for that to become relevant: when Harry Potter learns Expelliarmus and it becomes his signature spell, not only does it reveal something about his (mostly) non-violent inner life, it also becomes a plot point by Book Seven and comes loaded with a load of symbolism to boot. While, granted, some video games do do this*, the main reason for level-ups and new abilities is to maintain the difficulty curve and to keep the player's interest because they have some new shiny shit to throw at enemies.

Since, for me, RPing is a way of storytelling and not an exercise in the vicarious experience of fiction (I have actual video games for that), there's really very little to be gained from a graduated difficulty curve maintained by stat growths and gold acquisition in the face of increasing challenges. Particularly with tangible upgrades, such as a big shiny axe, keeping on top of what players have access to sounds like a fucking nightmare for a GM. How do you stop the players from picking up the Goblin King's Spear of Awesome once they've just killed him and his minions? Or, what, they pick it up, and it's actually a piece of shit? But the Goblin King was a tough enemy, so how does that square? What about the shop-keeper? I'm sure a ragtag bunch of rogues could overpower him and simply steal everything he has. There might be repercussions of some kind, but it sounds like a fantastic way to derail the plot.

It's worth saying I don't play tabletop games/NRPs, so this might just be a case of "the idea isn't my sort of thing because... it's not my sort of thing" - everything I've said above applies to non-tabletop/NRP games, where I'm sure there are really great DMs and GMs who can really run those sorts of games with whatever system works for them. I just know that arbitrary measurements of character aptitudes are a straightforward turnoff to any 'normal' game that I might otherwise be interested in. I'd be much more tempted to say "here's the setting; make a character; don't go mad" and see what players come up with. If it doesn't seem right, point out the bits that you're unsure about and see if you can reach a compromise. If you don't think they really "get" the game in question and they'll keep coming back with something that doesn't work, that means they're probably kryptonite to you and your game would be better off without them.

* I can think of a particularly good example where Rydia from FFIV refuses to cast the fire spell because of a pathological and justified fear of fire: only when she is forced to by circumstance, by which point she has come to trust the party, can she bring herself to even try. Then she gets access to Fire Magic in standard battles.

Wolf Manor

Do we have any takers more inspiring than "wouldn't mind" / "prefer not to"? :P

Wolf Manor

I guess the question now is:

• Who wants to go again?
• Who wants to run it?
• When?

Wolf Manor

I kept hoping that they'd all make it out and be pen pals for life.

@AuntFlavia

cute