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Pyrephox

I was 22, I think, and my mom had recently died, so I was sort of–floating, I guess. Looking for something to do, I was hoping to find something online relating to In Nomine, a game I love with all my heart but could never find anyone local to play with.

I found Brass and Steel, an In Nomine MU. I connected on raw telnet, and played on raw telnet for a full year or more, because I didn’t know that “clients” existed. There were only a few players on, but several of them became great friends, and one of them became my best friend, a friendship that has now lasted more than two decades, even though they don’t MU* anymore.

It was a fun game, and still has some of my most fond gaming memories.

Pyrephox

@MisterBoring Any deets you can spill on why not? I admit I’m super intrigued by the system, but wasn’t a backer and haven’t done any real dives into the mechanics or theme.

Pyrephox

I think that it’s generally a much better system than CoD 1st edition or oWoD. There are some places where I think the ideas were better than the execution, mechanically, but I enjoy the theme and the vibes way more, and even most of the mechanics are an improvement.

A couple of places where CoD 2E stumbles:

Investigation sub-system. I’ve seen very, very few people even try to use the Clue system, and when I’ve tried to run using it, I honestly find it badly explained and pretty finicky. I like the IDEA of it: there’s an intent of letting the players guide the investigation, of being able to use a clue you find to mechanically help you out with further inquiries, of your characters’ strengths and weaknesses affecting what they’re good at finding…and all of these are appealing. But again, execution.
Doors sub-system. I love the idea of Doors (you’ll read that phrase a lot), but again, the execution. In this case, it’s not necessarily the straight mechanics of it, but more the intent. Doors are intended to be used against NPCs to win favors/concessions over an extended basis. The thing is that very few of the things PCs want from NPCs actually work on that basis. Players, honestly, don’t tend to think that far ahead, so when they want someone to let them in a door, it’s usually three minutes before they have to be somewhere on the other side of that door, so “this will take a week and three attempts to influence the NPC” just doesn’t work. Ironically, it SHOULD work better in a MU*, but few games flesh out important NPCs to the extent that players think about earning favors/concessions from them for the future. I’d suggest taking the concept of Doors (favor for favor, being able to use skills other than social ones for manipulation, leveraging vices and leverage) and cutting it down to something that can be resolved in a scene.
Combat declarations. Honestly, this is just a failure by GMs and players to use this system or take it into account when planning things. It’s a SOLID mechanic. But yes, in CoD 2E, you’re supposed to start any combat by having both the PCs and the antagonists (or any other factions involved) declare their win conditions, what they’re trying to ACCOMPLISH with the combat, and if someone gets to it, they win whether the other side is dead/injured or not. It’s a great way to design combats that are more interesting than ‘let’s you and him fight’ and I really wish it was used more often. But the fact that it ISN’T suggests there’s a design flaw there, either in how it operates in situ or how it’s explained to people.

Tez

I think the difficulty of all of these basic pieces likely holds it back from wider adoption. There’s a reason there’s 10 new ares games for every new evennia game. ANYWAY GOOD LUCK WITH THIS.

Tez

@dvoraen Evennia is missing a lot of shockingly basic stuff. TOO BAD YOU CAN’T.

Pyrephox

@catzilla If it makes you feel any better, I had the exact same issue. I wanted to set up an original theme Ares game and just could not figure anything out, even the really basic stuff. Tried to go step by step in the tutorial, but didn’t understand what I was doing, and eventually gave up in embarrassment.

Pyrephox

@Yam On a colonized planet, the descendants of the colonists bond with genetically engineered, psychic dragons to protect the planet by fighting all-consuming spores from space.

Tez

Unexpected (to me) but chunk is winning in his bracket. If 602 goes down to Chunk, it’s a noble loss. What an underdog story.

Tez

I think it’s forked right. IF anything looks forkfucked, let me know.

Pyrephox

While I vastly prefer 2nd Edition Lost in 90% of everything…the complaints about pledges are absolutely valid.

There’s some good things: bargains with mortals are better in that they serve a specific purpose that mechanically explains HOW they hide you from the Gentry and how that can be useful.

Likewise, Seasonal bargains are better (but badly organized - it is a badly organized book overall, with a lot of weird things hidden throughout).

But I really miss being able to strike mechanically detailed pledges with other characters outside of the few defined bits in the core book. YES, the pledge mechanics were overly complicated and desperately needed some streamlining, but they threw the baby out with the bathwater.

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