Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

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M0rtimer
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by M0rtimer » Fri Feb 02, 2018 7:55 am

Oh it will, probably regardless of whether or not I get someone in time still or not... But if there's a spot open, might as well see if anyone would be interested. :) I realize it's probably a bit too short notice, though. :P

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Dlover
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by Dlover » Wed Feb 14, 2018 1:46 am

Well then. I've been going through the games I have on Steam, categorising them into ones I haven't tried, don't care about, want to play, or finished, and I've been checking each one for whether I can get any trading cards to sell. There are a couple that aren't for sale on Steam anymore. I'd initially decided that meant the cards wouldn't be able to sell anymore, but I just looked into it and it actually means that the cards sell for a premium. Which is how it normally works, I guess. A commodity has limited supply, so the value goes up. But I'd thought it would actually just be impossible for those cards to sell. Now hopefully it's not a case of cards not being available for sale and people just having a bunch of floating purchase offers.

Edit: The cards can't be put onto the market. There are just a bunch of floating purchase offers. Damn it.
My game:
Hunters of Letrua; Character list
Also Player / Monster stats, skill lists.

My characters:
Tugs Tails, the goblin that was sort of a trapper and wears a bear's tail at his neck, for some reason - Lair of the Mountain King (Run by Thinks)
Alex Sparo, A city boy, poor of sight, who has learned to manipulate people and make the most of what he, and others, have - Trinity Isles (Run by Mort)
Mehriv Turajin, a Noble Dragonborn Sorcerer sent from his clan because he wasn't dragony enough. - The Wandering Archipelago (Run by Thinks)

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BadgeAddict
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by BadgeAddict » Wed Feb 14, 2018 8:02 am

Why do people want to buy them? This is something I've never understood.

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M0rtimer
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by M0rtimer » Wed Feb 14, 2018 8:05 am

You can gather them into albums, and completing albums rewards you with xp, (A higher steam level meaning you get a bigger friends list which is the only real benefit I see in what I am about to say) and "game goodies" such as profile background and emotes to use in chat.

Why you would want THOSE is an entirely different matter.

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BadgeAddict
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by BadgeAddict » Wed Feb 14, 2018 8:16 am

This sounds a lot like free games apps where you can buy "social" items.

I'll keep my horrible opinions to myself.

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Dlover
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by Dlover » Wed Feb 14, 2018 4:06 pm

There's also a matter of completionism which borders on a mental health problem. Once they've started the collection they can't stand having it incomplete. It's like achievement hunting, people will spend hours in a game they hate to get all the achievements because they can't stand having an incomplete game on their list.
My game:
Hunters of Letrua; Character list
Also Player / Monster stats, skill lists.

My characters:
Tugs Tails, the goblin that was sort of a trapper and wears a bear's tail at his neck, for some reason - Lair of the Mountain King (Run by Thinks)
Alex Sparo, A city boy, poor of sight, who has learned to manipulate people and make the most of what he, and others, have - Trinity Isles (Run by Mort)
Mehriv Turajin, a Noble Dragonborn Sorcerer sent from his clan because he wasn't dragony enough. - The Wandering Archipelago (Run by Thinks)

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M0rtimer
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by M0rtimer » Wed Feb 14, 2018 4:07 pm

Oh man I dread to think of what would happen to me with my games library. :roll:

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Dlover
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by Dlover » Wed Feb 14, 2018 4:36 pm

It's quite terrifying, yes, considering I don't even have that many games at around 200. Thankfully I can be one who abuses those poor souls who feel the urge to complete everything.
My game:
Hunters of Letrua; Character list
Also Player / Monster stats, skill lists.

My characters:
Tugs Tails, the goblin that was sort of a trapper and wears a bear's tail at his neck, for some reason - Lair of the Mountain King (Run by Thinks)
Alex Sparo, A city boy, poor of sight, who has learned to manipulate people and make the most of what he, and others, have - Trinity Isles (Run by Mort)
Mehriv Turajin, a Noble Dragonborn Sorcerer sent from his clan because he wasn't dragony enough. - The Wandering Archipelago (Run by Thinks)

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Dlover
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Posts: 14130
Location: Somewhere. Probably.

Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by Dlover » Sun Feb 25, 2018 5:31 am

So I got Slay the Spire a little while ago and have been playing it... A lot. 60 hours over the past few days. But there is just one thing I have to say about it. F*** the Time Eater. That boss has shown up on all four of my last runs to reach the third area, and every time it's been with a combo deck that plays lots of small cards. It's just that one boss that says "Oh hey, you've got a cool thing going, would be a shame if you weren't allowed to do that anymore," but instead of a 1/3 chance of being the boss he just shows up whenever he hard-counters my deck.
My game:
Hunters of Letrua; Character list
Also Player / Monster stats, skill lists.

My characters:
Tugs Tails, the goblin that was sort of a trapper and wears a bear's tail at his neck, for some reason - Lair of the Mountain King (Run by Thinks)
Alex Sparo, A city boy, poor of sight, who has learned to manipulate people and make the most of what he, and others, have - Trinity Isles (Run by Mort)
Mehriv Turajin, a Noble Dragonborn Sorcerer sent from his clan because he wasn't dragony enough. - The Wandering Archipelago (Run by Thinks)

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M0rtimer
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Posts: 14109

Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by M0rtimer » Sun Feb 25, 2018 5:37 am

The way to beat the time eater with a combo deck is to just hit his twelve card limit every single turn.

If you can't do that, I doubt the effectiveness of this combo deck you set up in the first place. :P

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Dlover
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by Dlover » Sun Feb 25, 2018 6:30 am

Yyyeah, my 'long' combos are normally seven to nine cards a turn. The only time I've had more is on a run with Corruption and Dead Branch which had a tendency to give me near-constant skills, and the latest run, which was an Dead Branch/shiv deck. Works really well when you get a few cards to give shivs, but when you throw Snecko Eye into the mix it's just pure chaos and luck... Which is my specialty. Am I going to draw seven shiv-giving cards this turn? Probably. Can I afford them all? Maybe. Will the shivs give me more shiv-giving cards? Definitely. Ninja Scroll added to the fun. I played either 4 or 20 cards each turn with that deck.

The only time I've actually beaten the time eater, though, was when I had the Choker that limits you to 6 cards per turn and had... I think it was a strength build on the Ironclad. With lots of defence while Demon Form does its work.

... Of course, these woes are probably entirely avoidable. Because I suck at StS. Pure luck that I've won a few times. >.>
My game:
Hunters of Letrua; Character list
Also Player / Monster stats, skill lists.

My characters:
Tugs Tails, the goblin that was sort of a trapper and wears a bear's tail at his neck, for some reason - Lair of the Mountain King (Run by Thinks)
Alex Sparo, A city boy, poor of sight, who has learned to manipulate people and make the most of what he, and others, have - Trinity Isles (Run by Mort)
Mehriv Turajin, a Noble Dragonborn Sorcerer sent from his clan because he wasn't dragony enough. - The Wandering Archipelago (Run by Thinks)

Inspired
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Posts: 119

Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by Inspired » Sun Feb 25, 2018 5:43 pm

Hi guys!

My biggest bane with making forum games (other than creating the graphics) was keeping the character sheets neat and tidy and up-to-date...and THEN sharing them on the forum with appropriate phpBB format. I eventually always ended up copy pasting the previous update's formatted text and changing it where necessary, and then double-checking it at least twice because reading phpBB formatted code is/was tiresome, even with the preview function.

I've been thinking ever since... shall I make a universal tool to help GM's? I'm experienced with programming and databases, so this could work, right?

But then I realized that every game has really different requirements, so creating a tool that fits everything will become eventually too difficult to use and to set up for non tech-savy GM's.

So the solution now I'm thinking of is making a small tutorial on how to write scripts for Google Spreadsheets that will format your data for your GMing needs. The reason I'm thinking of this is that - unless you are from China or some other non-Google-allowing country - using Spreadsheets would be easier than using MS Excel, for example (regarding availability, etc.). And it's definitely easier than, say, setting up a database and running scripts against that.

My question is: are there any GM's here that would like to learn or use some Spreadsheets magic? Or are already proficient with it and would chip in with their knowledge? Or are there any tools largely available online that help you to "forumize" your data you already use or think would be worth investigating?

Mind you, this is not a product placement, my only aim is to create an option to make creating and maintaining phpBB based forum games easier. Kinda like a new "God School" series, if you will. It's worth to mention that it's also a learning process to me too at spreadsheeting, so if anyone knows a more efficient way to achieve something, feel free to contribute!

My final aim with this project would be creating an "add-on" to spreadsheets that would help format GMs their content (hopefully) much easier, without having to learn about scripting much. This is a really far goal (likely won't happen), but I'm stating it nevertheless in the hopes of maybe getting enough enthusiasm and help to make it real to any small degree. OR to make tutorials here to help aspiring GMs write their own scripts that speed up their updating process!

Because GMing is fun. Data maintenance and formatting less so. :D

Would gladly hear your opinion on this!
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Dlover
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by Dlover » Sun Feb 25, 2018 8:33 pm

I tend to enjoy fiddling with spreadsheets to get them working, though the way I set up my updates is fairly simple, so I'll just chip in and help work things out if there are specific problems to tackle, when I have time off from study (Which is practically always because I procrastinate.)
My game:
Hunters of Letrua; Character list
Also Player / Monster stats, skill lists.

My characters:
Tugs Tails, the goblin that was sort of a trapper and wears a bear's tail at his neck, for some reason - Lair of the Mountain King (Run by Thinks)
Alex Sparo, A city boy, poor of sight, who has learned to manipulate people and make the most of what he, and others, have - Trinity Isles (Run by Mort)
Mehriv Turajin, a Noble Dragonborn Sorcerer sent from his clan because he wasn't dragony enough. - The Wandering Archipelago (Run by Thinks)

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M0rtimer
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by M0rtimer » Mon Feb 26, 2018 5:58 am

A lot of games are actually already using google sheets, although mostly using existing sheets for the platform rather than creating their own, far as I know.

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Dlover
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Location: Somewhere. Probably.

Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by Dlover » Mon Feb 26, 2018 9:57 pm

The sheets for Hunters were made manually, but the only actual sheet calculations are essentially "What levels are this person's skills and has this person received far more exp than they should have?"
My game:
Hunters of Letrua; Character list
Also Player / Monster stats, skill lists.

My characters:
Tugs Tails, the goblin that was sort of a trapper and wears a bear's tail at his neck, for some reason - Lair of the Mountain King (Run by Thinks)
Alex Sparo, A city boy, poor of sight, who has learned to manipulate people and make the most of what he, and others, have - Trinity Isles (Run by Mort)
Mehriv Turajin, a Noble Dragonborn Sorcerer sent from his clan because he wasn't dragony enough. - The Wandering Archipelago (Run by Thinks)

Inspired
Game Master
Posts: 119

Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by Inspired » Tue Feb 27, 2018 4:09 pm

Well, the tutorials would be more about how to generate neat phpBB codes from the sheets, rather than the actual usage of sheets.

It's perfectly reasonable to keep the data visible and shared in the sheets (and leaving it to the players to check those for themselves), but sometimes a GM would just want to share a bigger piece in a post (e.g. player stats in a tab system or all gathered resources in a spoiler tag), and that's where this knowledge would come handy. Also, scripts can be added to any sheet, so there is no need to start new ones, the old ones can just be "upgraded" to make the update posting easier.
aka LooksAndSmiles, or L&S for short.

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thinkslogically
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by thinkslogically » Tue Feb 27, 2018 4:38 pm

I won't lie - my capacity for learning new random things right now is pretty limited. Saying that, if you were to start something I'd definitely at least read along. It would be cool to know whats possible.

For folk in my games, I'll be back to more-or-less normal in the next couple of days. Over the past three weeks I've had 2 conferences, the flu, applied for two jobs (one of which required ALL the supporting materials), done all my taxes and written an encyclopaedia entry about the deep sea in 10 days. Oh, and made myself a website.

So: sorry for the delay, all the deadlines are tomorrow and then I'll be back :)

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Dlover
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by Dlover » Tue Feb 27, 2018 10:14 pm

If my players want fancy posts and tabs and stuff they can harass me about it. Then I'll learn how to do that stuff. :p
My game:
Hunters of Letrua; Character list
Also Player / Monster stats, skill lists.

My characters:
Tugs Tails, the goblin that was sort of a trapper and wears a bear's tail at his neck, for some reason - Lair of the Mountain King (Run by Thinks)
Alex Sparo, A city boy, poor of sight, who has learned to manipulate people and make the most of what he, and others, have - Trinity Isles (Run by Mort)
Mehriv Turajin, a Noble Dragonborn Sorcerer sent from his clan because he wasn't dragony enough. - The Wandering Archipelago (Run by Thinks)

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spiderwrangler
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by spiderwrangler » Wed Feb 28, 2018 3:14 am

I'm in a similar position as Thinks, don't have the time/ability to be an active participant, but would follow along. Could be a useful game resource thread.
Games I GM:
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Dlover
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by Dlover » Sat Mar 10, 2018 5:59 pm

I wish I could punch my immune system in the face, because f*** knows it couldn't get any worse without shutting down completely.
My game:
Hunters of Letrua; Character list
Also Player / Monster stats, skill lists.

My characters:
Tugs Tails, the goblin that was sort of a trapper and wears a bear's tail at his neck, for some reason - Lair of the Mountain King (Run by Thinks)
Alex Sparo, A city boy, poor of sight, who has learned to manipulate people and make the most of what he, and others, have - Trinity Isles (Run by Mort)
Mehriv Turajin, a Noble Dragonborn Sorcerer sent from his clan because he wasn't dragony enough. - The Wandering Archipelago (Run by Thinks)

Inspired
Game Master
Posts: 119

Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by Inspired » Sun Mar 11, 2018 6:21 pm

So, to get off my lazy ass, I have written the very first part of the tutorials in the games resources subforum. It's not in my intention to make it game-y like the Gods thread, so noone is compelled to "follow along", but I do try to make it followable. I'm also trying to explain stuff in as layman's terms as possible, which might result in either being (technically) incorrect or condescending.

I kindly ask anyone reading the tutorials to give their feedback / questions in the related thread. This is to improve the content and quality of the tutorials, to help new GMs find their way through it easier. :)
aka LooksAndSmiles, or L&S for short.

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thinkslogically
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Location: Florida

Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by thinkslogically » Sun Mar 11, 2018 6:39 pm

Thanks! I'll have a read when I can and follow along :)

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Arch Lich Burns
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by Arch Lich Burns » Thu Mar 22, 2018 11:35 am

....I may not be posting as regualry in the next few days/week. A family member died today and I dont feel up to posting.

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Dusk9
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by Dusk9 » Thu Mar 22, 2018 11:38 am

:(

Hope you're doing okay. Were you close to them?

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Arch Lich Burns
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Re: Random Thread 2: Social plane shifting?

Post by Arch Lich Burns » Thu Mar 22, 2018 11:40 am

Fairly close. She was my neighbor as well. :/

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