Inflatable Daleks

[sobrique]

Did stuff over the weekend. The most important was "I GOT AN INFLATABLE DALEK"
How cool is that?
Took a lot of puff to blow up though (no, I know what you're thinking. And no)

But anyway, we now have a 4ft tall Dalek sitting (or standing, or whatever) in the hallway.
I think I'll have to find somewhere useful to park him. Or her.
Do Daleks have names? (or even genders) Other than 'Supreme Dalek' 'Ultimate Leader' or whatever?
And if so, what should we call this Dalek?

Briefly, Friday was pub night. Got into a discussion that over legalising drugs.

My opinion is that all drugs should be legalised. OK, so they're harmful. That doesn't stop people from doing them. But what it does do is regulates the supply, so it's available, it's not cut with anything really unpleasant (eg. cannabis resin cut with cocaine) and it's taxed, so there's at least some revenue being generated to cope with drugs related medical bills.
It also means that if it's available and controlled, you start greatly reducing drug related crime. A figure I heard (which may mean it's utter bollocks) was that 60-70% of crimes are drug related. If the supply were controlled, and 'appropriately' price, then that problem would be greatly reduced.

IMHO one of the ways in which drugs destroy lives, is a criminal record for a 'one off stupid mistake'. OK, that's not always the case, but if someone gets busted for doing drugs, then chances are it'll wreck their employment prospects. After all, who want's to hire a junkie?

I daresay it'll never happen. The political capital to be made either way is just too great. Look at the outrage and protest moving cannabis from class B to class C provoked.


Anyways. Saturday was cocktails and steak in Old Orleans. They got very busy, and their services wasn't particularly amazing. (We were waiting a long time for a table). Don't think I'll bother again. Especially not on a saturday. A 20oz steak is a wonderous thing though.

Sinergy on Sunday, went ... well fairly well. Lots of plot got shot. It seems that Old Chris won't be returning - he just 'didn't get on with it'. The two hour wait before session start probably didn't help, and the fact that SINergy is cliquey. Oh and the very obvious line drawn between NPCs and PCs by some. "Oh it's an NPC. I'll shoot it.".

Had a few people upset by getting characters iced. Ones I noticed were Tyrell and Redball. The former was executed by another PC (which sucks, really, 'specially when it's _quite_ as overkill as mader-atcher). The latter had his brain broken by a demo charge in a thingy. Which was a little unfortunate, cos the demolitions guy didn't spot it. (On an OC note, Grr. Could have really used a ninja transmitter like that).

I'm not quite sure where I stand on player death. It's one of these 'yeah it sucks, get over it'. But then again, I know how much I hate to lose characters that I have plans for. And then again, if it's blatantly something that's going to get them killed - like, for example setting
yourself up in direct conflict with another PC, and finishing off everyone you drop during session, or doing some utterly insane things in cyberspace - well, then it hardly seems fair to keep fudging things so they _do_ stay alive. Perhaps the problem with SINergy is the different treatment. I've only rarely seen 'established' characters getting killed in anything other than scripted events. Part of that, I'm sure, is due to general combat hardness. The rest? well.

I think I'd be annoyed to lose Marcus, and would probably sulk about it for a while. And then I'd have to go think up a new idea. One which I could blag carrying my assault rifle IC.

Is it just me though, or did SINergy seem a little more 'forced' last session than usual? I guess that's due to 'real life constraints' (and there have been some, with various people who help run the show). I think D&G are actually doing well, at a hard task. But they really need to delegate more. There was one situation of a plot occurance where their response was 'great, let's do it'. And the person expecting to 'do' the plot was waiting for someone to come and say 'OK, let's go then'. Which of course never happened. Something like that is trivially avoided by a little more communication. I appreciate that there's business, but it still feels
like a bit of a kick in the knackers to get ignored.

Should I volunteer to take on a 'more active role' (As in, try and take a hand in co-ordinating a "plot ref team") (Feedback requested on this, even if it is a 'don't touch it, it'll be hell', I _think_ I'd be prepared to try and do it, but...)



Monday was D&D. Fun session. Bit of hack and slash. Oh and then the bard set fire to a vat full of petrol-equivalent and made a big boom. Which I suppose in theory could have been a "You're all first level. You're all dead.". But it wasn't quite that violent, and the torch was 'tossed' in to the vat.

I definitely notice a big difference in game style depending on the player team. And the level of prep from the GM (That was mostly an old idea, that I'd sort of planned for SH, but seemed to work).

Oh well, back to work. Email posting rocks. I write this in Lotus Notes,
and it looks like I'm working. Fantastic.

(Edit: Except PBE reformats my text to be 80cols. Which is evil when doing HTML on an LJ. Probably lotus notes trying to be politically correct)

Comments

[karen2205]

Used to agree wholeheartedly with legalising all drugs - legalise, tax them and control the supply ie must all have health warnings, can't be sold near schools, must be diluted with harmless things, must of standard strengeth, can't be consumed in public etc.

And I still agree with that for most drugs - but I'm less convinced of the argument for legalising heroin - it's just too dangerous - though methadone should be available. Hopefully if there are lots of legal drugs with similar effects people won't bother risking a criminal record by going after heroin. (There may be other drugs that fall into this category - not sure, heroin's the one that springs to mind).

Re:

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

It's a fair point, and Heroin is extremely dangerous. I personally feel that legalising, and being very careful about availability would be more effective though. After all, we've already tried having some stuff legal, and other stuff illegal, and it doesn't really work very well.

There's the argument that one leads to the other. There's the argument that you cannot condone something unsafe. They're valid points. Even so, I think that on balance, if people are going to do any drug (illegal or not) then the correct way to do it is to legalise, tax and regulate.

[malal.livejournal.com]

If character death is caused by there own actions, or the deliberate machinations of another PC, then I'm fine with it (as long as said other PC has a half decent reason for it. "I was bored" & "It was funny" don't count). It's when the character dies through no fault of there own that I don't like it.

I don't have characters die often, normally they're quite sensible. I was pissed when Logus died to a "save or die" spell where his bloody good fort save still gave him a not very good chance to live.... However, I was perfectly happy how my Omega character died. He died partly because of how I chose to advance him, but mainly because some other PC's did something killing a good portion of the PC's, and effectivally ending the campaign.

This is why I *love* WFRP fate points. You can waste them by being stupid, or you can save them until fate Fucks you hard.... They probably wouldn't work outside a table top game though. I feel that in stuff like table top & linear LARPS (like Stormhaven), the party, while perhaps not really getting along, should stop short of seriously doing each other over / killing each other. For PC vs PC, the larger scale of Fest LARPS work much better (I think SINergy is set up and just big enough to count as a fest LARP).

Final note about SINergy. How many "old" characters aren't assosiated with The Family? That's part of the reason why older characters are more likely to live, the family is just very, very powerful, and I don't like them for it OOC. Also, I don't think the refs are really willing to do anything against them. If Plot killed Eden, I'm not sure Heather wouldn't kick up a real stink about it....

Re:

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

Whilst I like Heather, and think she's a marvellous lass, there's a reason why nothing is happening with Watcher. At all. I don't think she quite sees eye to eye with Graham and Darren on SINergy. For a variety of reasons. Not that that's a bad thing per se, but it does cause a certain amount of difficulties.

The difference between dying in D&D, compared to... well SINergy, is that it sucks, a bit, but then they wave a resurrect at you, and off you go again.

D&D does tend to suffer from excessive save or die problem. Ok, so not _many_ spells 'just kill them'.
Then again, to counter that, there's a mechanism for resurrection (that's actually quite difficult to get around)

In SINergy, there's really a balance point. IIRC 99% of all deaths (at least, those I've seen) are due to plot. After all, it's actually rather hard to die in session, unless you do something.

Fate points are a neat concept. But at the end of the day, once they're gone, well, then that's it.
(although to be fair, in our WHFRP campaign, we've had two character deaths, and they were both because they chose to 'suck up' the crit).

I've used one, to not drown and die a horrible death. I'm still not _entirely_ pleased about that one, because I felt that I was making loads and loads of 'getaway' rolls. Sooner or later, one is going to crit. May as well have just flipped a coin, to see which type of crit I got.

So yes, fate points are a pretty cool 'well, you've got this much, and then you die'.
Maybe we need to do that with luck at sinergy? You know, drop the 'once per month you get bonus' in favour of a once, and only once (per point), you get to survive, pull off something fucking amazing, or otherwise be a god.

(This of course, doesn't mean you get to endure the shot that dropped you, it does however, mean that you had a miraculous recovery from having your head cut off)

Might be a little too.... well not cyberpunky.

Player vs. player, was what happened to Tyrell (I've no idea what his real name is). Mader Atcher had been riding him quite hard. And it culminated in a fight between a really old PC, and a really new one. No surprises as to the outcome.

I am of the opinion, that the Family is a very major factor in SINergy. Not that that's _entirely_ a bad thing - those driving it are very good at scheming. It's just... well there's a little too much immortality, and ...

I'm rambling now. I'm not quite sure where I stand. I don't like a system where everyone just lives for ever and get's harder and harder. Then again, it seems unfair to just kill off x amount of time and work spent playing.

I could try and bring together something to victimize the Family. Then again, that would be exactly what it is. Victimization. Which isn't nice, pisses people off, and generally upsets.

For examples, see various reactions to plot thrown at the Alistrans. I could almost guarantee that whilst _some_ of the family might go "cool", "ooh" or otherwise like it, most would sulk because they were being picked on. And with good reason.

Mortalility is one of the hardest things to balance. Especially when you get into a player vs. player situation.

Or when they do something that you as a ref consider really daft and liable to get them killed, but they think that that's perfectly sensible, or even worse 'a bad idea, but what the character would do.'.

(And the perfectly sensible may well be due to you making different assumptions to them)

And it becomes even worse if you rejig the rules, or the plot to make it more or less dangerous. (After all, wouldn't you be gutted if you died because of the change to the way the medic treatment happened differently this month, compared to last month?)

Re: SINERGY death and destruction..

[crashbarrier.livejournal.com]

i wouldn't worry about stitching up the family.. they may have it comming anyway. although you pointing out that Thrax and Max were the attending Physicians hasn't helped much.. You do realise.. Thrax was pulled in by Snake the day after the session to make a statement about the events between Tyrell and Madder..

Thrax could do nothing but tell the truth..

Re: SINERGY death and destruction..

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

Oh well... :) That'll be interesting to watch.

Re:

[malal.livejournal.com]

As far as I was concerned, the problem with Mike's old Alistran plot was that it was a crap plot pulled off really crapply. Yes, we had something coming because of the background, but there really wasn't anything we could do about that plot except sit back & suffer. Even worse, the most prominent Alistran (Richard) myseriously never got affected. Heck, he even got some Bloody impressive upgrades out of it.....

If something's a bad idea, but what the character would do, it's still a bad idea, and should have appropriate consiquences. I've been dissapointed in the past by doing something Dumb IC, OOC expecting to die, and then having it fudged badly so I survived rather than die a heroic death. If everyone played sensible characters, then the game would be much more boring.

I'm coming to the conclusion that one of the ways to stop the power bloat is to stick fairly well to "if they fuck up bad enough, they die". You'll end up with very, very few character getting old, particulary in a PC v PC world. Those who do survive long enough to become amazingly hard old characters, well, they've earnt it! But there's always someone out there able to take you down. If you become so powerful that this is no-longer true, then it's time to NPC the character....

That's got the down-side that it does reward sensible (boring?) characters. And you always get the "different interpretations of sensible" problem, though that goes away the less the ref team have to interfere. One of the reason's I'm looking forward to Maelstrom if that they seem to be pushing for a more PC v PC situation than any other game.

Re:

[sobrique.livejournal.com]

Well, ok. That plot line may have been badly implemented. But if there were to be a plot to 'take the family down a peg or two' can you see it working in a way that _doesn't_ generate the same feelings?

I sort of agree that IC doing really hazardous things are going to get you in trouble. That's _one_ of the reasons that sometimes dice can be a bonus. The GM and player don't both feel like the GM is arbitrarily (even if it isn't exactly) fucking up the character.

So yes, it does mean that characters that are on the road to hell, end up there sooner or later.

It's one thing I've never _quite_ been able to decide where I stand on the matter.