RPG Soapbox

I'm torn on the Social issue. On one hand, I hate ignoring viable and legitimate aspects of RP. On the other hand, there are some times where I just grit my teeth and do whatever it takes to ignore it. (Typically when someone decides that they want to have cybersex (lesbian cybersex in particular) with my character, and instead of role playing it out, they try to roll dice. Crap like this is why I've entirely stopped playing female characters in Exalted chats. It's just too much annoyance, and I've never had a single character ever try to seduce a male character of mine.) I know I shouldn't, but I'm here to have fun too, and just because my character has App 4 doesn't mean I want to have cybersex with someone else who has App 4. (Appearance in Exalted works quite a bit differently than in World of Darkness. For one, it's actually *useful*, and factors into most Social rolls, making my usual App 2/Charisma 4 characters handicapped from a social perspective. And if you play a Lunar or an Alchemical, who have charms based on Attributes, you need higher attributes to get the more powerful charms. If it wasn't for the mechanics of social rolls and the Lunar/Alchemical charms in Exalted, I would never go above a 2.) It's a bit of hypocrisy that I've accepted as necessary for the enjoyment of the online Exalted experience.

Well, I disagree. It's obvious that WW never intended the heights some of these characters get. 300+ XP on a sheet spent is a LOT of XP in a game that is relatively stingy with experience rewards. That said there will always be people who don't want limits (usually the people who are up against said limits) and people who advocate them (a lot of times the people facing the characters at said limits). The main problem is keeping the game fun for the majority of players. If that means putting up a ceiling on stats then by all means do it. If making everything unlimited gives the most fun for the most people playing do that. It's -really- hard to run chronicles for the middling characters while making it interesting for the 300+XP guy and not insta-killing the newbs. That isn't to say it can't be done or that you have to include every character in every plot/storyline, but you do have to think about these things especially in how they apply to your metaplot.

Too much XP is handed out in online games. I don't have an answer or a solution, but I know from seeing sheets that there is a huge issue with excess XP. When your players are making shit up to find stuff to spend it on...well that is a problem. Of course said players often refuse to retire PCs when they get to that point as well. Capping or restricting stats is likely not a perfect solution but there really isn't such a thing when it comes to online play. You do the best you can with what you have to work with and then you watch as every arm-chair ST criticizes every dot you move around and every NPC sneeze. It's just one of those things you have to deal with.

Capping them just feels like an unwanted or needed annoyance. If you cap combat dots at 3, the first thing those people buy are the 4th combat dot. Same with any other ability, attribute or whatever. You're not keeping the game more balanced, you're just delaying what people wanted their starting character to look like by a month or two.

But if you're desperately seeking a low powered game, because anything that has strong characters must somehow qualify as "unbalanced" then...

The answer is very clear and not particularly hard to arrive at, it's just one that no one cares to enforce. Enforced retirement for characters. That, at the very least, ensures that people aren't rushing to max out their characters. It keeps the four year old characters from being around and breaking the game.

But I'm of a mind that that isn't necessary either. People are always upset with power discrepencies between starting characters and old ones, and that really comes down to limiting starting dots. If your character could've started at Dex 5, Melee 5- then the only real advantage that five year old character has is that he's spent enough experience that he's rounded out all his other non-combative stats as well.

Like when people insult your characters and then roll Char+Et and claim you can't be offended?

Bad picture choices for characters.

An excellent example of this would be to use one of those androgynous Japanese pop culture figures for a NON Asian character

God. On one site I used to play on, you would have thought that the Vampire ST and AST had serious boys' love manga fetishes with all the pretty Is That Really A Guy? Asian model pics in their respective character galleries.

what do I hate about some players...I could write a book
Players who think ALL characters must be the same (hot cyber or combat junkie) and if your character does not jive with their preconception...obviously you are a very bad rper and your characters must all die. They will godmode to make this happen.
Players who take ooc information into ic...this is wrong and should be punished by having their toenails sucked out through their noses.
Players who don't look at or read profiles (bears mentioning again and again) A great example...I played a woman of 60 + years of age....that 20 something should not have been flirting with her....read the profile, look at the picture..she's old....does your Justin Beiber look alike really want to bed that?
People who take their conception about your character, and decide you are that character....even worse if they hate your character, because it makes things rather....annoying.
People who just wanna have cyber
The sheer amount of app 4 people. Come on....not everyone in the real world is a hot chick or hunky guy....and while we're at it...not everyone is rich and famous either. Am I the ONLY one playing that McDonalds cashier or homeless bum who really doesn't have any money?
Where are all those 'hot' cars coming from? If your character is stealing them, they had better NOT be driving them around the same town.
People who beg and plead for you to play that character that...frankly, you're sick and tired of, you have NO place to go with him/her...and want to just..retire them. Ok, you bow to pressure, bring them back....and suddenly all the people who were begging and pleading for you to bring them back..are playing something else, and don't have time.
People who get a character....cause major problems as that character...then decide they don't want to play that character 'because they got in trouble'

always more....

Curious how would this work??? I mean.... how would one do that?


Please it's no worse than the amount of dex 4, or strength 4, stamina 4, or Wits 4, or whatever, the only difference is it's a profile stat and so people see it. Facts are you have to start with at least a 4 if you're a vamp in some attribute....next once again, that doesn't ever make sense to me... granted I have all of 0 app 4 characters and in the years I've rp'ed I've only ever had one. But still if people want to waste xp to "be pretty" let them, it's the most useless stat... If people can pretend to be Crazy rage driven beasts that slip into a alternate spirit world, on some crazy quest to save gaia, then I think they can pretend to be pretty. Then there's also the argument, that for every pc there's HOW many npc's? Pc's tend to be the "special ones" the ones that have something different about them, that's why their pc's... if they want to squander that on being "hot" I say let them.

Yeah, what Matthew said.

For me, this is the main point on this.
From chat based cities I can think of, London has roughly 7.5 million inhabitants, Magid has 2.3 million, San Diego 1.3 million, Detroit is about 900,000, Seattle 600,000... there's more, obviously, but that's enough to illustrate the point.
Taking the smallest of those cities, you'd need roughly 6,000 PCs in the database to represent just 1% of the city population, with the number obviously growing higher and higher as you move up through the cities.
Giving a very generous estimate for IV, widely viewed, I believe, as the largest of the current chats, they have at most 2000 characters.
Even if all of those were AP 4 millionaires (and they're not), that's less than 0.1% of the population.
App 4, resources 4, any other damned thing at 4, even if present on the entire chat population, would be far from 'everyone in the world'. On any chat.

Yeah, what Off on One said too.

I hate it when people make shy/bitchy/sociopathic pc's and... bitch about logical responses. It can be totally legit to play a jerk or a sociopathic and I've enjoyed it at times. Just don't bitch when you clear a room, people overlook you or even respond badly. Common sense.

Pet peeve:

Watching someone enter a room and immediately talk about their choice of wardrobe as they enter. -10 dkp to me

(another -10dkp if they actually link an image to the outfit in the post).

-Indi-

Along that thread: People with only a link for a description.

Logging into a scene and being given no direction from the other players. It's one thing if it's a very small setting but I HATE it when I log into a bar or Elysium or something like that start interacting with the people inside and then being told they're "in a secret room" or "in the back room" or whatever. If you are going to be that picky about positions, a quick OOC post about where people are is really what I feel to be common RP courtesy.

Yeah. Or unknowingly playing with one of Hellbilly's PCs. It'd be nice to get a little OOC ("This is Hellbilly") before I waste my time playing with someone I'm just going to ignore once I figure out who he is.