Quote from: Hastur T. FannonHacking in most cyberpunk games (can anyone who's worked in systems administration or computer security tell me what's it like in Shadowrun 3rd?)

Sorry, no idea, can't be less realistic or more time wasting than Cyberpunk's idea of hacking.

Shame they don't have real hacking rules, since it would involve the whole party instead of one player. One night the whole party can go dumpster diving, the next night they can spend searching through the garbage.

Or the party could drop USB pen drives around the places workers hang out, for them to luckly find and then take to the office to upload your trogan onto the system by-passing most of the firewalls.

Or dress up as cleaners to switch the keyboards with ones with dataloggers hidden inside them.

Make it much more a roleplaying thing than a mini-game.

Quote from: Vellorian...but they lack the cultural knowledge to know what "looks out of place" in a manufactured environment because they come from an "au natural" environment.  Thus, they shouldn't get the bonus even if they do "think differently."

Call it what you will, elves simply notice such things. It's the way they are. We are, after all, talking about magical creatures. Elves have an innate talent for noticing when things are wrong, for when things are out of place. Secret doors are out of place, where an elf lived hasn't the damndest thing to do with it.

Quote from: mythusmageCall it what you will, elves simply notice such things. It's the way they are. We are, after all, talking about magical creatures. Elves have an innate talent for noticing when things are wrong, for when things are out of place. Secret doors are out of place, where an elf lived hasn't the damndest thing to do with it.

Which may work for your mind and your way of thinking, but doesn't for mine.  It doesn't make any sense.  It's beyond "hand wavey," in fact.  It's contrived.  

It's three guys sitting in their basement laughing over the bastard who has to go and buy more beer, just as he shuts the door, one of them turns to the other and says, "Let's give the Elves the ability to see secret doors in manufactured dungeons, which makes no sense since their entire cultural motif is to be nature lovers!  And let's not tell Gary!  See if he notices!  Ha ha ha!"

I see, it doesn't fit your idea of how things should be. Trouble is, that's how things are in the game, And in this case the game takes precedence because we are dealing with things out of the ordinary. Were we dealing with mundane matters I'd tend to take your side. But elves are not mundane. They are fantastical, and as fantastical creatures they can be allowed fantastical abilities.

Fantasy worlds don't always make sense by real world standards. I can live with elves, a fantasy creature, having an ability it may not be possible to have in the real world. Something I must note the great majority of other D&D players have no trouble with either. It fits the spirit of the game and it harms none.

With the exception of your feelings, and that we can live with.

re: elves + secret doors - and here I'm remembering as best I can - I've heard two explanations.

a) A combination of sharp senses - touch among them - make elves more aware of air currents where there shouldn't be; i.e., coming from behind the tapestry on that apparently solid wall.
b) Elvish construction - you know, those houses in the trees, white marble palaces, et al? - emphasizes artistry over raw functionality, meaning that doors, windows, and other portals are often built to be concealed when closed, restoring the "complete beauty" of the wall; homes built into trees have a bark-covered door that fits flush, and so forth. After a century or so of living in this environment, you get pretty good at spotting minor details on walls and such.

Just the two most plausible reasons I've seen.

Relatively inflexible classes, roles or splats turn me off.
That's a system element rather than a background element though.

Quote from: BagpussSorry, no idea, can't be less realistic or more time wasting than Cyberpunk's idea of hacking.

Shame they don't have real hacking rules, since it would involve the whole party instead of one player. One night the whole party can go dumpster diving, the next night they can spend searching through the garbage.

Or the party could drop USB pen drives around the places workers hang out, for them to luckly find and then take to the office to upload your trogan onto the system by-passing most of the firewalls.

Or dress up as cleaners to switch the keyboards with ones with dataloggers hidden inside them.

Make it much more a roleplaying thing than a mini-game.

*steals idea*

I have no idea what hacking is actually like, but I totally agree (now) that this is how it should be, and that anything else must suck by default...

Or something.

Quote from: Christmas ApeJust the two most plausible reasons I've seen.

How about "elves are autistic" (by human standards at least)

It's annoying.  You walk into a room and see every fucking detail at once (for further details read "The Curious Case of the Dog in the Nighttime")  Is it a wonder we sometimes appear spacey?

Quote from: BagpussSorry, no idea, can't be less realistic or more time wasting than Cyberpunk's idea of hacking.

Shame they don't have real hacking rules, since it would involve the whole party instead of one player. One night the whole party can go dumpster diving, the next night they can spend searching through the garbage.

Or the party could drop USB pen drives around the places workers hang out, for them to luckly find and then take to the office to upload your trogan onto the system by-passing most of the firewalls.

Or dress up as cleaners to switch the keyboards with ones with dataloggers hidden inside them.

Make it much more a roleplaying thing than a mini-game.

Total agreement with Beejazz, tried to post last night but cable and 'net access had gone out for an hour or so.  What I had been trying to post (saved the text) was:

Some great ideas there, could also be parts of a low level adventure, 1st lv. chars doing the "grunt work" for a higher level npc or mentor.  "So kid, you want the info on the workaround backdoor in that systems security code?  Your going to need to do something for me first...  you know that office building down on 8th and main?..."

Quote from: Caesar SlaadWhat is your "Magic Deer"? No, I am not talking about which authority figure shackles and oppresses you. What element of an established setting really bothers you? Be it for reasons of shattering disbeleif, making statements you don't agree with, or any other thing that makes the setting annoying for you?

Edit: Emphasized SETTING details. SETTING. Not system.

The nearest thing I can think of right now is confusion about the nature of the 'verse in the Serenity RPG. Is it one system or several? What orbits around what? What are the distances? I don't want an astronomically accurate treatise on the subject, just something that is consistent enough so that you can make reasonable plans as players.

The new matrix and wireless everything in SR4. I just don't like it.

Quote from: Elliot WilenI do not like the Japanese portion of Yrth from GURPS Fantasy. Then again, Yrth isn't very memorable or interesting. Oh, now that I think about it, I remember that Yrth also had one of those annoying origins where somebody or something picked up bits of historical Earth and deposited them in another dimension. It works for Cidri (The Fantasy Trip). Not so much for Yrth.

Oddly enough, this is what draws me to Yrth - the chance to use every historical AND fantasy bit that I want, real-world religions, etc.  Granted, I use a different map than they have...

Quote from: LawbagForgotten Realms - simply by having the world acknowledge the existence of "parties" of adventurers wandering around laying claim to titles and treasures.

So forced it made me sick - Ed Greenwood - could you have been any less obvious this was an ADND gameworld?

I hate this about any fantasy setting, really - the whole "Adventurers' Guild" thing.  In Forgotten Realms it seems the most pronounced, but it crops up in nearly every other fantasy setting I see, and usually without any reason aside from giving the DM an unimaginative excuse to get PCs to go on adventures ("You see a notice hanging in the Inn requesting 'brave adventurers'..."  Gah).

Not that there weren't itinerants and vagrants in the Medieval/Renaissance period, but the whole organized society of them and acceptance of them rubs me the wrong way.  Warhammer seems to handle this element best from what I've seen; Earthdawn has in-game reasons for it, too, though even then it can be taken too far (as in the Parlainth boxed set, where 'adventuring' starts to feel like going to Disneyland).

Forgotten Realm tearing the guts out of evil really annoyed me, and how they added back in the rise of evil kind of felt flat for me.

Maybe it's because they let the fiction dictate the flow of the setting.

STill, just picture if King Azoun, seeing what happened to the Kingdom he left behind, arose as a Death Knight and retook the throne. That would have been plausible.

Quote from: T-WillardStill, just picture if King Azoun, seeing what happened to the Kingdom he left behind, arose as a Death Knight and retook the throne. That would have been plausible.

Sure, make me wish my players could even consider playing an FR game. :mad:

(One once described it as the "damp cardboard of fantasy settings; a lifeless, tasteless, undifferentiated beige mess that refuses to hold together when pressed".)

Quote from: Abyssal MawThis is kinda what I ended up doing. But I had to fold the game pretty quick. I couldn't force the issue other than have the police treat his PC like he was crazy (which didn't jibe with his background and annoyed him).

It was like this:

"Ok. Your'e pretty sure the cultists have summoned a deep one at the old abandoned boathouse.."

"I get on the phone and call the police!"

"Uhm.. they didn't beleive you when you told them about the ghosts, so what are you going to tell them?"

"I .. tell them there's a fire at that location. Then I hang up and we all wait outside for the police to arrive"

The only solution is to totally railroad them. And I can't do that.. so I just ended the game after one session. The real world sucks as a setting.

I don't consider it railroading to tell a PC that he's so far outside the bounds of what is expected for a campaign that he is killing it.

Sort of like in a superhero game where a PC just wants to roll initiative the moment he sees a baddie and tries to sneak around and kill thugs with ranged energy blasts from rooftops.

I just tell players doing that crap "dude, cut it out".

In the case of a Cthulhu game, I might have just had the cops spot the PC at the scene of the "fire", conclude he was a whack-job special FX guy who was simulating the monsters and/or using hallucinogens on the cops, and have him carted off to an asylum and removed from the game... or hauled off to Gitmo and removed from the game.

Seriously... when a player is knowingly going out of his way to kill everyone's fun, I warn them, and then remove them from play.

*shrug*