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Messages - rusted barrel

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Monsterhearts / Re: Turning Same-Sex PCs On
« on: May 08, 2013, 09:24:38 AM »
mcdaldno - I appreciate your weighing in on the topic, I appreciate the efforts you put into the skin, it overall looks like an interesting take on AW, but in the end I don't believe I'm going to spending any time in your world.  Certainly any and every game insists a certain amount of headspace on their players, but I'm not subscribing to be told how to play, regardless of how successful you've found your game to be.

thanks for your time, everyone who has posted, it's helped me find what I was looking for.  Good gaming to you

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Monsterhearts / Re: Turning Same-Sex PCs On
« on: May 07, 2013, 10:18:28 AM »
Arscott - I appreciate your efforts, tiring and rewardless as I and all this may be.  The Darkest Self point you made is good, that internal aspects of the character are taken over temporarily, good example (you do, however, get to choose your playbook, with the understanding of what sort of Darkest Self may come into play, and that as much as anything should affect playbook choice).  I don't, however, think the 'am I okay with ...' question you posed is quite so simple.

  I can think of numerous real *and* fictional but plausible examples of people being shut down and holding steady and lashing out physically and running away, throughout my personal experience and history at large (I'm intentionally avoiding the more magical and bizarre moves, to match basic move with basic, and because my issue has nothing to do with the supernatural element).  Heck I can even think of examples of staring into the abyss.  I can not think of examples of being turned on any which way.

  "About three days ago, a guy tried to walk out of a restaurant without paying for his meal.  The lady at the till shut him down.  She barked at him, the whole restaurant stopped, he stopped.  He gained the condition 'humiliated', stood there awkwardly, then decided to pay rather than try to run away or lash out physically."

  Simple situation, a real one I witnessed the other day, but could just as well be a play in game, imagine the character is the waiter or waitress or dine-and-dash.  I can't get the story-teller in my head to do the same with Turn On.

  Perhaps, long ago as it may be now, my high school experience was lacking and I'm thus unequipped to imagine such a sexually spontaneous school life.  This is where the pill catches in my throat, this is where the verisimilitude falls apart for me, that attraction can happen so freely.

  And I feel I should state, for the record, I am not homophobic, and it is not homophobia that is at the heart of this series of posts - it has never bothered me in anyway which way people might choose or be programmed to swing.  The move rubs my intuitions the wrong way, regardless of orientation.  I suppose I'm the sort who wondered why Shinji was complaining about his feelings so much, when he had a giant robot to pilot.  Maybe someone needs to make me a straight guy playbook.

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Monsterhearts / Re: Turning Same-Sex PCs On
« on: May 07, 2013, 03:26:27 AM »
chamomile - perfectly reasonable to voice that first paragraph.  You can never go wrong hearing that sort of thing again.  There isn't much more advanced than solid ideas like that, I've found.  I think your very last point doesn't stand, however.  The world says sexuality is in flux, so long as anyone is rolling dice, so unless male example retires or goes off stage, who knows where the needle will land.

Daniel - my thoughts were not directed at you.  I enjoyed your first post, though it didn't answer my question, so thank you for sharing that.  Itemizing my thoughts and replying part by part seems unnecessary.  A sample of three opinionated individuals hardly makes a case against this being a weird move.  Should other internal features of characters be influenced by dice rolls?  Tendency to dialogue, patience, desire for a family or a long-term vocation?  Taste in music?  Desire for bloodshed and violence?  Gluten intolerance?  Any of those could change during adolescence or in game-play, but we leave that to the player's discrection.  I'm leaning absurd to make a point, but honestly, why sexual identity is turned by dice, I still can't say I'm satisfied.  And the answer will be, yes, it matches the fiction.

writersmelody - thanks for the share, sounds like a great scene.  Hope we can find some of that ourselves

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Monsterhearts / Re: Turning Same-Sex PCs On
« on: May 06, 2013, 03:14:21 PM »
still finding this move particularly weird, and I think it should feel so for everyone - homosexuals, bis, straights and whatever other identification you happen to be.  Attraction is not a test of strength or chance, it doesn't work more the harder you push.  You know those old carnival test your strength games, with the hammer and the bell at the top and if you hit it hard enough, bing, you get the prize?  This mechanic feels like that.  Oh, hot roll, now I'm leaning towards whichever way the wind blows.

  Dragonraven and I were bantering about this topic and came to a point of "well maybe we're overanalyzing and we should just roll with it" but I'm thinking, the game designer *chose* the name of the move.  He didn't choose "envy" or "impress" or "wow", so he's trying to say something about the make of the world - and maybe that's as far as it should go, that in "this" world and game, that is how things work - but I think an idea, a mechanic that expresses should be able to take a good shaking down, and I'm still unsatisfied with the logic of it.

Attraction leads to orientation, I think it's false and in bad faith to just say "oh, well you're attracted to this or that, but you don't have to feel it or do anything about it, you get to chose your response after this response is chosen for you".  That begs the question of why is it in the game, if it doesn't do anything?  A guru roleplaying friend once was fond of saying "If it is in the rules, it is in the game, it is real".  Or, the volition flipside which Dragonraven brought up, and I haven't seen addressed properly, and I believe is of utmost importance.

Which follows to, if I'm repeatedly finding myself swinging one way or the other or back and forth (because Chamomile was right, this applies as much to man-hating lesbians as to sworn off sex christians as to strongly identifying homosexual males or come-what-may bisexuals, or sluts of any gender, because that terms is multi-applicable, to whatever realistic nuance or comical stereotype you like, because the real world is full of both and everything in between, so the game world should have that as well) how can I just say "no, that's not really how I feel"?  Because that is what the dice will do to your character.

If I get shot in game, I don't argue about the harm, oh well, I got shot, deal with the consequences, maybe I should have thought out the plan better.  If I do the research roll, I found out the ancient secret or not.  Maybe I try again later, maybe I have to change tactics, whatever.  The fact this roll waffles -- well, it happened, you felt like this, but you don't have to *really* feel like this -- is a cop out.  I think this roll should have some spine, or should not be in the game.

I dig the youth aspect, I dig the supernatural horror, but mechanizing sexuality is proving to be unsatisfying.

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Apocalypse World / Re: Playbooks in the Movies
« on: September 16, 2011, 09:20:46 PM »
i thought of nausicaa as a savvyhead, deep insights and spooky calm under pressure, she even had a controlled growing environment, and definitely had a good weird stat (in that the Ohm (sp?) were the weird, or part of it)

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Apocalypse World / Re: A couple questions about the Battlebabe
« on: September 14, 2011, 12:58:40 PM »
its just a weird thing with his mechanics and dramatics, but its really awesome, actually.  I've got a rule in me head called the 'Aggro Exception', meaning you can bluff ranges when a character is going aggro, cause its one sided.  But when you're seizing their whatsits by force, in an alley fight, in a stairwell, the first floor of a ruined parkade, the handgun comes to bear faster and more accurately than the rifle.  Dramatically.  But the vice versa of course is true, Sarajevo Joe will pick you off with his rifle, and you won't have a chance to draw your six shooter and make much good of your threats, until you make it up the stairs that is, and then of course ...

it keeps different choices valid, plus it makes the MG, one of the gunlugger's specials, and the battlebabe's mod which you were referring to, well it keeps them special.  Otherwise there would be inflation from everyone getting that kind of range, and then the gunlugger would need an even bigger board with an even bigger nail in it.

i personally added hand range to derringers and sawed-off shotguns, to keep them ugly and surprising and in your face.  Also added intimate to knives, cause you can stab someone in bed, but you can't swing a golf club or machete without them noticing, citing, of course, my previously stated Aggro Exception.

i kinda had a hard time with the naming of some of those mods myself, like why auto and semi-auto do such different things, so just rename them, call them extended clips or bullpup conversions or stock and barrel mods or whatever, it won't change the function, just the flavour.  So long as your MC is cool with it.

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Apocalypse World / Re: Playbooks in the Movies
« on: September 14, 2011, 12:21:41 PM »
I'm kinda veering off the movies bit, cause I think other media have some better examples, but trying to stick to film

Faceless - Jason, Friday the 13th
- the Maxx, from the cartoon and original comics
- the dude from Splatterhouse
Driver - tankgirl, tho' she took a simple liberty with 'second car is a tank'
- Riding Bean, from the cartoon
- Jack Burton, Big Trouble in Little China, tho' he spends lots of time outside of his car and is still pretty awesome
- the narrator (and the antagonist) in Kool Keith's 'Gorilla Driving a Pick-up Truck' (music?  maybe I'm off topic, but its kind of apocalyptic)
- Clive Owen's no-name character in that weird BMW series of shorts
- Jason Statham, the Transporter (too easy really)
Hardholder - Bill Murray as the Mayor in City of Ember, and why didn't anyone else think that movie was spectacular?
- Sol in Doomsday, tho' he might have taken moves from Chopper and Hocus
Battlebabe - Aeon Flux, not the movie, the cartoon
- the Bride, Kill Bill
- Doc Holliday, Tombstone, he's totally not a gunlugger, there's the difference
- was it on this post or another (I should do my homework)?  I loved the take that Leto from B13 was a battlebabe, spot on
Hocus - Thulsa Doom, James Earl Jones in Conan with Snakes

Brainer - Marcello, City of Lost Children, but other characters are playing around with brainer stuff in that movie too
- the dudes from Scanners
- i want to put Donnie Darko in here, but I think he just had a really high weird
Skinner - Banksy, he's a skinner
- classical geisha, I mean classical, not an asian whore, like a classically trained sophisticated geisha, that's skinner cent pour cent

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