(no subject)
Apr. 27th, 2007 11:35 am
Apr. 27th, 2007
(no subject)
Apr. 27th, 2007 12:03 pmMonica Goodling: If you subpoena me to testify, I'm going to take the 5th on every question and so admit that I did SOMETHING illegal at Gonzales' order, but not tell you what!
Congress: Right, then. You're immune, your testimony now can't be used against you. Oh, and you no longer have 5th Amendment protections. Get the fuck in here and tell the truth or go to jail for the rest of your life.
Congress: Right, then. You're immune, your testimony now can't be used against you. Oh, and you no longer have 5th Amendment protections. Get the fuck in here and tell the truth or go to jail for the rest of your life.
Guess the state!
Apr. 27th, 2007 03:27 pmRepublican proclaims that not only is the devil real, but that the devil is personally trying to destroy the United States of America through immigrants, and the only way to stop Satan is to stop all immigration.
For those of you playing at home, two hints:
#1: It's not Ohio.
#2: That sounds like the Americanist Heresy to me, wouldn't you agree?
For those of you playing at home, two hints:
#1: It's not Ohio.
#2: That sounds like the Americanist Heresy to me, wouldn't you agree?
(no subject)
Apr. 27th, 2007 04:47 pmTerrorists plant IED in Austin, TX. Nobody gives a shit because the only potential targets were women.
I'll say that again: TERRORISTS PLANTED A BOMB IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND NOBODY GIVES TWO SHITS.
And why? Because the terrorists in question are white, male, heterosexual, and Christian, and the US media and to a lesser degree the public doesn't care about anything white, male, straight Christians do to brown people, females, queers, and heathens.
Feministe has more, with more links.
I'll say that again: TERRORISTS PLANTED A BOMB IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA AND NOBODY GIVES TWO SHITS.
And why? Because the terrorists in question are white, male, heterosexual, and Christian, and the US media and to a lesser degree the public doesn't care about anything white, male, straight Christians do to brown people, females, queers, and heathens.
Feministe has more, with more links.
On fear mechanics.
Apr. 27th, 2007 08:07 pmSo, I was talking to ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
harald387 after a game of Deadlands wherein a character who wandered into the heart of the Night Train[1], with a Fear Level of 5[2], with close to 30 Nosferatu[3] on their way back in a hurry, failed a Guts check and fled. Then he got caught by the Nosferatu and torn to bits.
(Yes, there's a story coming. Eventually.)
It's Kevin's assertion (correct me if I'm wrong, man, but this is what I got) that there is no such thing as a good fear mechanic, because having control of the character taken away is never fun, and even the best fear mechanics always have at least one random result on the table that's totally boring.
And I can see his point, really. I just disagree about them being *never* good, and I think there's a strong place for them in games like Deadlands, where a character's DESIRE to be brave does not, cannot, and SHOULD not always match up with their ABILITY to be brave.
Take my example from a moment ago. A character ran into the heart of the lair of a bunch of killer vampires, into a dark place that's basically a giant rolling coffin, stinking of decay and rot, when he's not carrying a light, where he can see just enough to know that there *could be* a dozen more of the vampires hiding in there.
And he runs in without slowing down.
And then, without checking the cabin at all, he turns his back on it and waits, hoping to ambush the returning Nosferatu and take them on one at a time.
And he's Claustrophobic already, to boot.
And it's only then when I asked him to make the roll, and only then that he failed it.
My point is, in the absence of mechanics of this sort, characters have an unfortunate tendency to turn into Conan crossbred with Rambo crossbred with a member of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders and with the resulting abomination bathed in pure testosterone. They're not only fearless, they're *so* fearless that they'll run headlong into the depths of Sunken R'Lyeh while carrying The Sword Of Instant Death To The Wielder and will never think twice about climbing into the barrel of the Giant Flame Cannon Of Death as it's preparing to fire because they think they'll probably be able to get out of the cartridge ejection mechanism before it does, and, well, if they don't, so what, it's just a character, right?
And that kind of thing drives me batshit.
And I've totally seen fear mechanics done badly. Take GURPS, for example, when a group of stoic heroes, faced with common zombies that they've seen before, faced before, and are totally expecting, are still basically guaranteed to lose one character to a failed fear reaction for the length of the entire fight because the odds say somebody WILL fail that check, there's no "cheat" mechanic in GURPS to help you out on that check once the dice have hit the table, and being out for 6 rounds is not unusual.
And this is 6 GURPS rounds - not only is that likely to be the whole fight, but that's also likely to be two and a half hours of real time.
Call Of Cthulhu has a similarly bad system, where a flat percentile roll is the difference between losing 1 SAN (doable the first four times, but then you're fucked for the rest of the game on #5) and losing 1d6 SAN, which has a 1/3 chance of taking a fully functional character and rendering them unplayably insane for the rest of the session at least.
Deadlands, at least, provides multiple degrees of failure, but once you get onto the Fright Table and rolling, it's still a flat D20 roll and one of the possibilities really is "heart attack and quite possibly die". Barring that one reaction, the rest at least max out at "potentially permanent phobia or nervous tic, Shaken with a chance to recover every round, and must move at a run away from the fearful thing until you recover", and that's for *deeply* botching a standard Guts roll or for failing one while facing off against a terrifying scene of true horror. And there's a cheat mechanic to let you decide, after rolling, whether or not you want to accept the roll and go on, or change the results.
So. Anyway. Rambling to get to this point, but the question is this: What do YOU think about the use of fear mechanics in RPGs? When is it appropriate? What's the upper limit of effect you think it should have? What experiences have you had where they got in the way, or when you think they would have been a good addition to the game?
[1]: Long-time Deadlands players are cringing already as soon as I say that. My Night Train score, for the record? 50%. And they didn't get to the final act at all, because the survivors were completely incapacitated.
[2]: For those who haven't played Deadlands, Fear Level is a measure of how close the nightmarish demon realm of the Hunting Grounds is to the Earth. It's a scale from 1 to 6. At 6, there is literally no difference between the two.
[3]: I really hope I don't need to explain this one.
harald387 after a game of Deadlands wherein a character who wandered into the heart of the Night Train[1], with a Fear Level of 5[2], with close to 30 Nosferatu[3] on their way back in a hurry, failed a Guts check and fled. Then he got caught by the Nosferatu and torn to bits.(Yes, there's a story coming. Eventually.)
It's Kevin's assertion (correct me if I'm wrong, man, but this is what I got) that there is no such thing as a good fear mechanic, because having control of the character taken away is never fun, and even the best fear mechanics always have at least one random result on the table that's totally boring.
And I can see his point, really. I just disagree about them being *never* good, and I think there's a strong place for them in games like Deadlands, where a character's DESIRE to be brave does not, cannot, and SHOULD not always match up with their ABILITY to be brave.
Take my example from a moment ago. A character ran into the heart of the lair of a bunch of killer vampires, into a dark place that's basically a giant rolling coffin, stinking of decay and rot, when he's not carrying a light, where he can see just enough to know that there *could be* a dozen more of the vampires hiding in there.
And he runs in without slowing down.
And then, without checking the cabin at all, he turns his back on it and waits, hoping to ambush the returning Nosferatu and take them on one at a time.
And he's Claustrophobic already, to boot.
And it's only then when I asked him to make the roll, and only then that he failed it.
My point is, in the absence of mechanics of this sort, characters have an unfortunate tendency to turn into Conan crossbred with Rambo crossbred with a member of the 101st Fighting Keyboarders and with the resulting abomination bathed in pure testosterone. They're not only fearless, they're *so* fearless that they'll run headlong into the depths of Sunken R'Lyeh while carrying The Sword Of Instant Death To The Wielder and will never think twice about climbing into the barrel of the Giant Flame Cannon Of Death as it's preparing to fire because they think they'll probably be able to get out of the cartridge ejection mechanism before it does, and, well, if they don't, so what, it's just a character, right?
And that kind of thing drives me batshit.
And I've totally seen fear mechanics done badly. Take GURPS, for example, when a group of stoic heroes, faced with common zombies that they've seen before, faced before, and are totally expecting, are still basically guaranteed to lose one character to a failed fear reaction for the length of the entire fight because the odds say somebody WILL fail that check, there's no "cheat" mechanic in GURPS to help you out on that check once the dice have hit the table, and being out for 6 rounds is not unusual.
And this is 6 GURPS rounds - not only is that likely to be the whole fight, but that's also likely to be two and a half hours of real time.
Call Of Cthulhu has a similarly bad system, where a flat percentile roll is the difference between losing 1 SAN (doable the first four times, but then you're fucked for the rest of the game on #5) and losing 1d6 SAN, which has a 1/3 chance of taking a fully functional character and rendering them unplayably insane for the rest of the session at least.
Deadlands, at least, provides multiple degrees of failure, but once you get onto the Fright Table and rolling, it's still a flat D20 roll and one of the possibilities really is "heart attack and quite possibly die". Barring that one reaction, the rest at least max out at "potentially permanent phobia or nervous tic, Shaken with a chance to recover every round, and must move at a run away from the fearful thing until you recover", and that's for *deeply* botching a standard Guts roll or for failing one while facing off against a terrifying scene of true horror. And there's a cheat mechanic to let you decide, after rolling, whether or not you want to accept the roll and go on, or change the results.
So. Anyway. Rambling to get to this point, but the question is this: What do YOU think about the use of fear mechanics in RPGs? When is it appropriate? What's the upper limit of effect you think it should have? What experiences have you had where they got in the way, or when you think they would have been a good addition to the game?
[1]: Long-time Deadlands players are cringing already as soon as I say that. My Night Train score, for the record? 50%. And they didn't get to the final act at all, because the survivors were completely incapacitated.
[2]: For those who haven't played Deadlands, Fear Level is a measure of how close the nightmarish demon realm of the Hunting Grounds is to the Earth. It's a scale from 1 to 6. At 6, there is literally no difference between the two.
[3]: I really hope I don't need to explain this one.
(no subject)
Apr. 27th, 2007 08:14 pmBush Administration claims greatly improved statistics on deaths in Iraq.
The number of deaths in Iraq has gone UP, not down, but they've stopped counting *car bombs* in the "bombs" category, so the STATISTICS are looking better.
The number of deaths in Iraq has gone UP, not down, but they've stopped counting *car bombs* in the "bombs" category, so the STATISTICS are looking better.