NST E-Mail

2008-06-23T19:33:02Z

The NST's e-mail box gets more spam than any e-mail box on the face of the earth.

I'm not the least bit interested in seeing Hillary Clinton nude and I'm completely satisfied with the size of my breasts.

Just FYI

Work is Slow

2007-10-05T18:13:28Z

Dropping Ree off at the Airport made me about an hour late to work. I chatted for a bit when I first got in so it was about 10:30 when I started doing actual work. It's 11:10 not and I'm finished.

I need a book or something.

Reset

2007-08-02T05:28:49Z

Sooner or later we’re going to need to reset the chronicle and when we do I’d like to make some suggestions about how to fix some of the problems in our current chronicle.

Now, I’ve got lots of smart friends so I figured I’d shamelessly mine them for ideas.

Anyone?

(note: I have not heard anything about a reset so don’t start any wild rumors. This is pure speculation on my part)

Thanks
Kevin

Issues with the Current Chronicle

High, Top, and Global Approvals
Ten percent of the player-base apply for High, Top, or Global items, but 70 to 80 percent of the work involved in being a ‘high’ level ST comes from the Database. This means that 80% of your efforts go into 20% of the player-base.

Additionally, approvals don’t solve problems, they just delay them. For example, putting an approval requirement on an unbalanced bloodline won’t make it any less broken. An unbalanced bloodline that requires approval won’t cause an instant explosion but sooner or later it’ll start causing problems.

Custom Rules
Mechanically custom rules are a huge pain.

Every custom rule increases the complexity of the chronicle making it harder for players (new and old) to get a feel for the game.

Custom mechanics are difficult to balance and require tons of work form ST’s who would be better served keeping the chronicle running smoothly and/or providing plot.

Custom mechanics disrupt the theme and feel of the chronicle. We will shortly have more custom power in play than there are powers printed in WW books.

Individually a custom power can be thematically cool but hundreds of custom powers added together make the chronicle feel random and disjointed.

Economy
Last chronicle we had reasons to trade and things to hoard, which gave us a rich economy. In this chronicle there are very few things that require a teacher and those that do are easily accessible. If you absolutely can’t find a Gangrel willing to teach you Protean you can create a bloodline with Protean In-Clan. Without an economy we have fewer this to scheme about and the political game is less interesting.

Divided Loyalty
Last chronicle I was loyal to my Clan and my Clan was synonymous (mostly) with one of the three covenants. If I made a Venture Anarch who wanted to tear down the Camarilla I’d be the black sheep of my family. If I played a Brujah who wanted to tear down the Camarilla I was a fairly stereotypical.

I could choose to play ‘to’ or ‘against’ type but in this chronicle there’s no such thing. A uptight elder Ventrue who staunchly supports the Invictus is no more or less rare than a Carthian Ventrue who favors free enterprise or an Crone Ventrue who’s joined a crazy bloodline that lets him fire turnips out of his eyes.

Every time I make a character my loyalty is divided among my family (or Bloodline), my Clan, and my Covenant. Although that was designed initially to create factional differences; it ends up making everyone into wishy-washy characters who do anything controversial without betraying one (or more) of their loyalties.

Proposed Solutions

High, Top, and Global Approvals
One of the fundamentals of game design is that if you intended something to be rare and everyone buys it anyway, you’ve made the item either too powerful or too inexpensive. Instead of throwing red tape in the way of problems, I propose increasing the cost of items we wish to regulate.

For example, joining a bloodline with Vigor might cost the character 10xp. A bloodline with some crazy broken power might have a cost of 30 or even 50xp. By balancing things in XP rather than through approvals we remove a lot of red tape, making these items accessible to the average player. Further, this stops all charges of ‘nepotism’ in such items – either you paid the XP cost, or you did not. No ST above Low had to be involved.

Additionally, it would greatly reduce the workload of high level STs and would make the chronicle more accessible to a wider range of players.

Joining Bloodlines, joining multiple Covenants, and making characters with a lot of age are all example of things that could have their approval level replaced with an increased cost. (Custom rules, interaction with canon NPCs etc… would still require approval.)

Custom Rules
On the surface, this is the simplest problem to solve, disallow custom items all together. Custom rules don’t add enough to the chronicle to justify the pain they represent, and disallowing them would encourage people to play source concepts, making the chronicle’s theme more stable. (This would also encourage players to spend money on WW books, and as we are their official fan club, I’m sure that will make them happy.)

The downside of removing custom items is that it’s going to make the chronicle feel very static, since there will be a lot fewer options than we’re used to. My solution is covered under “Economy” below.

Economy
I propose we kill two birds with one stone. Make up for the lack of choices when we remove custom powers by adding an economy at the same time; allow characters to teach their Bloodline powers.

In order to keep things from getting out of hand, we can require the teacher to have one dot higher than what he’s teaching (meaning no one outside fo the bloodline can learn the 5th dot) and increase the purchase cost of bloodline specific power to x8 (a precedent set in Mage).

Divided Loyalty
Start out by making status do something. I suggest a simple system were insulting/attacking people with higher status causes the offender to loose a point of status temporarily. If someone repeatedly loses status, the loss becomes permanent. This allows people interested in status to play with it and keeps the status rules from dragging down character who would rather ignore it.

For example, if I have Invictus Status 4 and you have Invictus Status 5 I can’t openly insult or attack you without risking status loss. If I do it once my status drops to 3 for a month. If I do it repeatedly in the same month my status can drop to 2, 1, or 0. If I loose status consistently over several months I might loose a permanent dot of status.

Once Status has a functional purpose, we need to establish a hierarch of loyalty. The most logical progression is Covanant before Clan. We can establish this progression by adding a caveat to the status rules saying that if you’re siding with your covanant when you insult/attack a Clan member you don’t suffer any penalties. Clan status will still mean something but it’ll be subservient to Covanant status.

This won’t prevent people from making characters who hold Clan over Covanant, it’ll just make them mold breaking in the same way that an Anarch Venture was last chronicle.

Once we establish a relationship between Clan and Covanant we need to forge a hierarchy within each covanant that allows for a healthy leadership that won’t disappear when one character dies or leave the cam.

Each Covenant hierarchies should have a similar ‘root’ system. As an example, each Covanant might have a leader on the city level, a leader on the regional (or State) level and a national council made up of regional leaders.

The titles of the leadership roles, the way to claim them, and the powers they hold should vary form Covanant to Covanant based on Theme. For example, the Invictus leaders might rule with an iron fist, while the Crone leaders may be empowered to make judgments only after members in their area ask for advice. Similarly, the Invictus might grant a leadership position to the person with the strongest oath-chain and allow him to hold the title until he’s killed while the Carthians might hold a popular vote once each year to pick their leaders.

Work is cool

2007-03-23T20:39:18Z

So, my work just installed a soda fountain in the break room. I’m pleased but also frightened. It’s like Karma just shouted “I’m coming for you!”.

Seattle is weird…

2006-09-13T20:39:23Z

Overall I like it quite a bit but its still feels strange.

People drive funny up here. They think the speed limit is the actual limit to how fast you’re supposed to go. Stranger than that, when it rains, traffic doesn’t automatically come screeching to a halt like it does in CA.

The Trees are taking over. There are trees everywhere, blocking storefronts and generally standing in the way of commercialism. They’re kind of pretty but I haven’t figure out how they stay alive without sprinklers. This would never happen in California.

People are taller here. It’s weird to meet random people on the street who can look me in the eye.

Pretty people abound. You know those commercials were you see the pretty girl and the handsome guy serving burgers at McDonalds? In California fast food employees are almost all genetic deviants with horns or too many fingers but up here normal people actually work in the service industry.

I work at a job straight out of a 80s sit-com. Everyone’s friendly, free snacks abound, running into someone’s pet in the hall is expected, and it’s not uncommon to see a supervisor strolling the corridors wearing shorts and no shoes. One of my coworkers showed up with a home made hat in the shape of a squid and instead of forcing her to dress appropriately, they attempted to pressure her into making more so everyone could have one.

I’m surrounded by water. In California I lived in a town called “Riverside” for two years without actually seeing a river. In Washington I have to drive over a stream to get home and there are so many lakes and inlets within 15 min of my house that I can’t keep track of their names.