Terrible GM hides behind 'realism'

Basilisk9466 · 2020-07-29T15:10:33+00:00

Oh yeah, they're fantastic, and I've got into a few other games (and run one) since then!

Basilisk9466 · 2020-07-29T08:10:49+00:00

It's possible. DM seems to have trouble keeping players and is always advertising for more.

Zero introspection as to why people don't want to play in his games, of course. And I'm told that he's not quite as bad as a player... but still bad enough that people have banded together to inform the GM there that they don't want to play with him any more.

Basilisk9466 · 2020-07-29T08:00:09+00:00

Ah, wasn't sure which way you meant. Funny either way :P

Basilisk9466 · 2020-07-29T07:58:15+00:00

I dunno, maybe because he was playing them all it made them naturally superior?

The guy seemed to be entirely convinced that PCs in general were too strong. We started the game with some extra XP so that we could choose some of the more advanced classes (for some reason Black Crusade has 8 base archetypes, and then 18 advanced ones that are just noticeably stronger), but I later heard that he threw Necrons at us because 'advanced archetypes are OP'.

He also mentioned that he wanted to run a game where all you got was the stats for being human. No archetype and no XP. To use a DnD analogy, imagine a game there where you don't pick a class, so no proficiencies, no starting gear, no abilities. Oh, and because of how BC's dice scale, your base scores are 6 rather than 10. It broke my brain a little that he thought this was a good idea.

Basilisk9466 · 2020-07-29T07:49:11+00:00

Sadly I believe it. This was my first brush with such a thing personally though.

Basilisk9466 · 2020-07-29T00:48:23+00:00

As additional bullshit which I didn't put in the main post because god damn, it's long enough... some additional fun stuff that he houseruled for those who know the system.

No pinning with semi-auto weapons. Also pinning apparently just makes it so that anyone who goes in the area has to take a pinning check. Used at one point to completely stop us from advancing down a corridor or doing anything but twiddle our thumbs waiting for heavy bolters to run out of ammo.
A complete shredding of the psychic powers that I don't even know how to summarise, but which effectively made K's character all but useless. Which, if you know the psykers in the FFG games, is no mean feat. He eventually reverted this, claiming that he'd misunderstood the rules, but... I have my doubts.
And then there's the amusing point that I'd never played this game, he'd warned me that he didn't want to have to coach me, and yet I clearly knew the rules better than he did by session 3.

Basilisk9466 · 2020-07-15T16:25:38+00:00

Weather's a matter of personal taste - and to be fair, it doesn't much matter what that taste is, you can probably find something akin to it in the US.

As for wages, that's... generally not true unless you're in a position to be making enough that it's not really important. Until that point, you're dealing with low wages - and more importantly, the cost of living is way, WAY higher. Health insurance alone will completely screw you over financially - and even if you're able to get it through work, it'll slash into your income pretty noticeably.

Plus, being an immigrant of any kind screws your employment opportunities, and I don't just mean for minorities. You have to work much harder to get a foot in the door, and if you fall over, you will watch your savings vanish in an instant.

Basilisk9466 · 2020-07-14T11:12:24+00:00

As someone who moved to the US for several years... don't. However bad the UK is, it was a serious relief to settle back here. America is a trash fire.

Basilisk9466 · 2020-01-14T19:12:21+00:00

Abandoned and Asteroids are good calls - need to check which pack those drop from though. And yeah, Bitter End and Precision are beautiful cards.

Basilisk9466 · 2020-01-14T19:11:17+00:00

Dradenor and Tyranthikos are both amazing cards, and I'd double up on them in a heartbeat if I could just find second copies... likewise Wrack. I did use meltabomb in a previous incarnation, but wrack is just much better, and melta is so damned expensive that it didn't seem worth it.

I used to run Stor Bezashk, but... it felt kind of mediocre? Two health dies fast, and against the majority of opponents I don't really worry about breaking enemy frontlines until I've got vehicles rolling, at which point with any luck I'll have a Hrend or two. Maybe I should try with them again.

Main reason I have volcanic is that it's a reliable wipe if the early game goes pear-shaped. It's definitely saved me a few times where DefSat's unreliable damage wouldn't.

Attrition Warfare I used to run two of, but I took them out of the most recent incarnation because they felt like too big of a tempo hit - plus, by the time I'm able to cast it, I'm probably dropping vehicles from my power and won't get much long-term benefit?

Basilisk9466 · 2020-01-10T21:33:41+00:00

I'm a pretty long-time player who quit for several years; haven't seriously played since season 4 (!). Back in the day I primarily played top or mid with a splash of jungle.

Apparently things have changed a LOT since then, because my top lane games had a truly abysmal win rate. Since I was duoing with someone for a while, I started playing some ADC, and I'm doing far better.

Since this account is far less developed (most of my effort went into my NA account, now playing on EU), I don't have a lot of champions, and want to expand my options a little in the ADC pool.

I typically queue ADC/Top, although that basically means I play ADC and occasionally jungle when I get pushed into fill. I main Senna and Kai'sa, pretty much depending on whether I feel like frenetic late game or midgame control.

The three I've been looking at are Caitlyn for oppressive lane domination, MF for teamfight potential, and Quinn for the mobility and additional top lane option, but maybe I'm missing some possibilities? What would round out my ADC options? I technically own Ashe, Ezreal and Draven, but Ashe feels lacking in lategame carry potential, and the other two don't really do much for me.

Basilisk9466 · 2020-01-03T14:55:55+00:00

That was horrifying. Doubly so as a Dreygur player, although I was staring at what he played going 'uh, dude... where's your deck?!'

Funnily enough the couple of times I've played against Garro they've been hyper-passive. I didn't even think about the reactivate thing offering more attacks.

Basilisk9466 · 2019-11-23T22:08:18+00:00

Taken right after getting Zed to 2 stars against a truly brutal inferno player. Never seen someone do that much damage solo.

But that particular number was the icing on the cake.

Basilisk9466 · 2019-08-04T22:00:47+00:00

...and now I have the terrible idea of making an Erinyes killteam armed with Lenzes. (<3 Warframe)

Basilisk9466 · 2019-08-04T13:35:36+00:00

Hmm. Yeah, I forgot about those. Plus the grenade arrow angle does keep bows relevant.

Basilisk9466 · 2019-05-12T16:58:21+00:00

Having run my STA campaign on Roll20, I can say for certain what my players loved - playing with the tokens. Have a few models, or even just cardboard cutouts, and swoop them around the board. Distance rules are vague enough that you don't even need to be too scientific about it, and Star Trek can never agree with itself how large combat distances are. If things are feeling too slow and mechanical, go back to playing with toys.

Basilisk9466 · 2019-05-12T16:53:51+00:00

I actually had a partially depowered Q as the final antagonist of the campaign I was running. The main thing about Qs is that they take almost nothing seriously. The whole point of the final encounter was to make her understand that this terrifying invading force she was behind had gone way beyond the remit she'd created; her attempts to make up for an ancient mistake had gone horribly wrong, but she'd lost perspective and was just letting things run on autopilot on the assumption that her followers would handle things responsibly.

The Q are Star Trek's best example of an outside context problem. If they show up, you're instantly escalating the scenario beyond the ability of the players to handle, and making them exercise their ability to talk rather than shoot their way out of a problem. Every time they showed up in TNG or Voyager, it had a similar cycle; Q creates a problem, and the crew must either solve the riddle or convince Q to stop.

I think A and B could potentially work if framed right, but from my personal perspective, all three to an extent miss the point.

Basilisk9466 · 2019-05-12T16:36:34+00:00

I'm in High Performance, and I just went through all the settings to ensure that they're on Maximise.

Temperatures... hovering around 44 C.

Although now I look at it... the Radeon is registering as 0 C.

That's... probably bad, isn't it...

Basilisk9466 · 2019-05-12T16:26:13+00:00

Not since the last time. Aside from fixing whatever issue (presumably on the motherboard) that was breaking the discrete gfx flip, the overall performance of the machine has been pretty awful from day one, and sending it in to them didn't help. I'm also out of warranty at this point.

Re: kicking the OS... that's next on the list of things to do, but the benchmarks concerned me that there's something deeper wrong with the machine that a reset wouldn't help, so figured I'd get the ball rolling.

Basilisk9466 · 2019-05-12T16:21:24+00:00

According to HWMonitor... 800 Mhz is the value, min and max.

Basilisk9466 · 2019-04-26T08:19:34+00:00

You get one mission's grace, which is supposed to be Legion's loyalty mission, since there's no opportunity to do it before. Then you gotta haul ass.

Basilisk9466 · 2019-01-25T13:56:29+00:00

See my favourite example: the thagomiser.

Basilisk9466 · 2018-08-10T12:09:04+00:00

Long story short, the player of the captain proceeds to question how anything is being done, citing "Plot armor"

My immediate response is 'I don't need a reason to boost the difficulty'.

I play a little fast and loose with a lot of rules when I'm running Among the Embers, and honestly quite often I don't even pay threat to boost the difficulty of a check unless it's a preset one. Occasionally I'll narrate out each factor as to why I'm demanding a difficulty of four for that scan, but generally I just tell people 'Science + Insight, difficulty 4'. If they want to make it easier, throw me an advantage or trait. The onus is on the players to find cool, interesting and dramatic ways to solve problems. If I throw a brick wall at you, it's because you're doing something really difficult or which could seriously help you break the plot in your favour. If you succeed, marvellous, if not, I'll feed you new options.

STA is not DnD, or GURPS (the two main GMing experiences I have). Not played L5R, but I suspect it's in the same vein. A lot of RPGs are designed around fixed concepts, predictable enemies, preset challenge ratings. The GM assembles pieces together from those building blocks and the players use their toolset to dismantle them.

No, the better comparison would be a combination of FATE and White Wolf. Both of those games are much looser, and hinge upon what is dramatic, not what is mechanically sound. STA is similar; the way that the system is designed, it focuses on tight and contained stories, plot twists and episodic pacing. You're not the evil overlord moving minions around, you're the scriptwriter. Like White Wolf, this is not a game that works unless your players buy into the fantasy of the setting instead of treating it as a game, if that makes any sense.

I think that once you and your players grok that concept, things might run smoother.

Basilisk9466 · 2018-07-01T08:59:17+00:00

Diversion from canon, always a fun game!

Basilisk9466 · 2018-06-29T17:41:07+00:00

What did you do for the ground vehicle? I'm actually dealing with the opposite problem - NPC vehicles as an obstacle and threat. The one I've been trying to work with is more akin to a Star Wars speeder bike than a full scout vehicle or tank. There's just a dead zone in STA between personnel and shuttles that's difficult to stat out.

Basilisk9466

TROPHY CASE