kingandy | Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

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Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

Hurm. Skimming the ALL NEW ALL DIFFERENT SoS rules, because I'm thinking about going this month, and I've already spotted stuff I'm wary of in just the basics section. Being a LARPer, I shall bitch about this in my personal journal rather than mentioning it to the relevant people.

The One Second Rule: Doesn't that make the Off Hand Use skills next to pointless? It's a great idea in Maelstrom, where skills are few and combat is greatly streamlined, but there you don't pay for basic use and all the modifier skills apply to all your hands. You can be holding as many weapons as you like and still only attack once a second, so making people pay to be able to hold extra weapons seems obtuse. Since the main point of the changes was to reduce the number of skills, it would seem to me that dropping the Off Hand Use skills would be a logical companion to the One Second Rule.

Spell Vocals are now apparently four lines no matter what level of spell you're casting ("Normal casting is where the character recites the appropriate vocals for the spell (typically about 4 lines, each line containing 4/5 Syllables)"), where before it varied with level of spell. I'm not sure if this is an accidental omission or intentional, or even if people will remember (LRPers being notorious for playing the rules as they remember them rather than as they actually are or have ever been). If it's a keeper, I'll miss rattling off those long vocals for the high level spells.

I'm not initially impressed with the layout of the rules themselves, as that "basics" page is overly long and imposing and the skill costs really should be displayed next to the names (having to click into each one to check costs is aggravating), and the tone varies between overly technical and overly simplistic. Also the lack of text style and/or formatting is slightly off-putting, but that could just be my web design sensibilities.

Other gripes:

There's far too much detail on the reproductive cycle of the new cow people, especially as compared to the other races, which mention it not at all.
Spell descriptions still contain reference to spells that no longer exist.
There don't appear to be appreciably fewer spell tables, and WTF, Elemental Summoning, no.
Things aren't as good as they were in my day
"Glossary is confusing and incomplete
These kids today, with their "For Shizzle McFizzley Ding Dong Dizzle" Snoopy Dog language and their general disrespect towards their elders

So, slightly apprehensive, but I'll probably give it a go, sure why not.

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My first thought was divide all damage related stuff by 5.....

Racial life points still come in dribs and drabs (4/5/6 points per level), but yeah, everything else seems to be in 5AC clumps now - even Reflex AC, crikey. That does of course fit with the policy of making Table C skills the impressive, restricted access skills.

One could probably offset the racial life points thing by micromanaging the costs rather than the points gained - instead of giving a goblin fewer points per level, charge them more. I'm sure you could get more or less the same progression.

Being the power gaming, old fashioned, spot a loophole in the rules a mile away 'Traditional' LRPer that I am, I would have said that the one second rule should really apply per weapon. So you hit with one weapon and cannot hit with another weapon for one second but you can with the off hand weapon.

This is why I prefer an 'at least one weapon length clearance before each strike' rule to prevent the old bugbear of woodpeckering. This rule means that polearms etc, which generally do more damage, are more difficult to do rpaid attacks with compared to daggers where you can do as many as you like in a very short time. Reasonably realistic. For a given definition of 'realistic' :)

Actually, it is one secound per weapon, it's just very poorly worded.

I think the primary mis-phrasing may have been "We are implementing the one second rule" - Maelstrom players et al will just go "Aah, the one second rule, I know what that is" and extrapolate from there (cough, cough).

And those are meant to be simplified rules?

I think the word more commonly used is "better". There have been a few culls and rewrites, but not really (IMO) enough to warrant a new version number...

As far as I understand it, the aim was never to simplify the rules, and certainly not to reduce the number of skills.

Looks like the main aim of resetting the system was to remove the humungous gap between high and low level characters. Since that was happening anyway, there was an opportunity to sort out some of the more contradictory and just plain stupid bits of the rules (like getting rid of angelic curing from magic), and to sweep the massive pile of unresolved old plot threads under the carpet.

The main big change I can see is the no skill: no effect thing. You can't just buy a big wodge of healing potions and magic items any more.

I haven't even read the cow people background, coz they sounded daft. Now I might have to, just to see. I blame you.

Well, I wasn't really moving in those circles at the time so I didn't necessarily get the whole story, but any time anyone tried to sell it to me they went on about stripping things down, reducing redundancy, making things easier for newbies to understand (the sheer number of skills being one of those things mentioned as imposing).

Reducing the high/low gap was usually the last reason mentioned, if at all ... though, now I think about it, "getting rid of all those snacky items" often came up.

Interesting point about magic items. I guess that's because potions now only last 5 minutes and there's no permanence spell ... Scrolls and 3-hour enchantments are still a danger, but much less open to abuse via huge bags of cash ;)

Not keen on the spell vocal thing. I'll miss the insanely long spell vocals too, it was part of the fun of playing a mage

its one attack per second per weapon (this is mostly to stop someone doing the girly slap hug kill so effectively used by gustav..)

which means you get to attack twice as fast with two one handed weapon

Ah, now that I read more carefully the entire second half of the paragraph is dedicated to explaining the "per weapon" concept. I'm afraid I must have stopped reading at "all damage calls must have a space of one secound between them" ... but still, you see what I'm saying anout LARPers and reading of rules :D

and that is why we have people that know little things like that who can make sure you do.....

oh the one second thing also applies to combat cast spells. you can only combat ast one spell per second

But that is because in the time it takes a mage to cast colourspray and spiritualist can say halt 3 times

which seems unfair in a lot of peoples books so that was changed so the length of the name has no impact on how long a spell takes to cast

Heh, also cuts out the quandary of whether it's legal to shout "MAGICDARTDARTDARTDARTDARTDARTDART!"

yes... as it is now definately not... cause that was stupid

Not sure if I ever did it myself, of course, but I think it followed similar reasoning - "IC I can do this instantly, so ..."

Hurrah, after 4 months someone actually bothers to point out thier problems with the basics.

First off, the One Secound rule should be one secound per weapon, but having read it now, I can see how badly worded it is. I shall amend this.

The spell vocal thing is from the old basics. The Spell-Level-length thing hasn't been used in about 2 years.

And yes, the basics page isn't fantastic, but the information is there. Was thinking of breaking it up with some link-page-bookmark-age but I can't remember how...

AS for the incomplete things, it's all simple a work in prgoress. Around september I told people I wouldn't be able to do as much as I had done, and having other people work on it would really help, as I was just going to go at pace that suited my other obligations, and 3 months of no-one offering to help later, here we are.

The skill layouts aren't my baby, you'll need to see the Scouse about that.

"The Spell-Level-length thing hasn't been used in about 2 years."

Crikey. Nobody told me, I'd been doing full length vocals ... do you recall if there was a reason for that, or if it just slowly became established as Common Knowledge? High level spells being inconvenient was always one of the primary balancing factors of magic-users...

hell I started coming less than two years ago and was told that there was variable length spell vocals dependant on spell level when I first started....and then at a later date when I started playing a mage and got my first table b spell

but that Is one of the reasons for the reset to tidy up a few of the loose ends like that which half the players think work in different ways

that was me

Like Andy, I have no recollection at all of anyone changing the spell vocal lengths - I was always using the very long ones for high-level spells, or (in an emergency) paying the extra cost to combat cast.
If that rules change did happen it was a) badly thought out (totally agree with Andy that long vocals for powerful spells were a balancing factor for spell casters and b) *very* badly communicated.

Unless of course it is one of those things that just 'became common knowledge' without actually being an official change to the rules...

AS far as I'm aware, it's always what's been enforced since I started. The basics were made from the downloaded version of the rules on the old sos site, and that is what they say regarded Spell vocals. There is no mention of variation for spell level.

Me monkey, monkey type. No hurt monkey.

So how do these changes affect existing characters? The chance of me ever playing Sir Bob again are slim but I'm curious how he'd effected.

And just how big had the gap between high and low characters become?

They affect existing characters by dropping them to 100CP and losing all their equipment. Basically the database was wiped clean; you're allowed to play existing characters but you stat them as a starting character (yes, 100CP is starting now) and play them as ten years older. The IC rationale is that a decade of relative peace has passed - people are getting a bit rusty, fortunes have shifted, and "permanent" magical items have been affected by some sort of mysterious magic drain or something.

The gap between high and low characters was getting incredibly awkward. Or so I understand - I never really noticed myself ;)

as I understand the gap (which I did a little but mostly from only one view point)

as a starting character you wander into tavern an attack happens.. the campaigns member in charge is aware there are 800 point characters in tavern.... and unless the tavern is balanced with effectively kiddie fights for 15 pt characters you feel about as useful as a one legged man in an ass kicking contest. Not a good feeling for new players to be given...and you can also feel slightly worried that one wrong word to one of the more powerful characters and pop

As a high level character (and this is where I guessing only ever got to 100 pts before resetting) you have the fact that if you enjoy fighting all the fights are almost assuredly boring and you don't even break a sweat, you can't be hugely inclusive to the new people all the time because you can't exactly invite a 15 pt character on your 500+ request dungeon because he/ she will(reffere to one legged man comment) and then die hideous;y if a monster notices them, AND if the new guy who has had a wholly subjective opinion of things like the gods of the world given to him and he says something insulting a very religious characters god, the high level player has a choice of either be nice to the newbie and let it slide this once (possibly setting a bad precedant) OR horribly butcher a new player... which could end up with that player never coming back to sos and him telling all his friends how we are horrible and exclusive (or if he is of the correct mind set going off telling his friends how we are all really good roleplayers that stick to what the character should do as appose to slipping out of character when it suits them)

That was my opinion on the fault with the giant gap... other people may see it differently

that was me by the way

I asked the Head of Rules ie Geoff, and he seemed to think the spell vocal thing was not implemented, its still long vocal to cast big spell. he doesn't even know where that came from.

Yay controversy!

The Grondyr cow-folk were my original play for a new PC race but they weren't accepted, however they'd already been mentioned in several parts of plot for a few months leading up to that - since they existed and y'know, I'd done a lot of work, we kept them in as flavour. The redroductive cycle is purely my own bad.
The Glossary is incomplete because generally we're just adding to it as we think of things to go on there, it's not meant to be a definitive list and I'm probably going to retitle it at some point.
Everything else is purely the fault of RulesCom :D

I skipped to the campaign and background stuff. I'm heartened to see that my Orc write-up remains as-was, with stupid, unused 'spiritual branding' bits and all.
Even my typos...

Which leads me to the basic rules. My eyes glazed over very quickly, but i did notice it was riddled with typos and bad grammer.

Hooray.

Old SOS/New SOS/Same SOS

In my own defence, most of it was written in the wee hours of the morning, where language itself became an abstract concept and I could taste colours.

I also really like commas.

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Nostalgia isn't what it used to be

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Cow People and Glossary

Re-written? Bah!

Re: Re-written? Bah!