THEY CALLED ME MAD, THE FOOLS (or: Mad Science and You)
Posted by Pax on 06/13/19
Hi, folks! This is a friendly heads-up. This is, please note, not directed at any one player, it's just something we've noticed a whole bunch of different people doing lately and wanted to clarify. Because there's a whole bunch of folks out there right now playing at doing Really Cool Stuff with alchemy and trying to do clockwork/mechanisms and whatnot, and having those experiments go wrong.
THIS IS TOTALLY FINE. I want to stress that first! The mishaps of unsuccessful mad science are great RP fodder and scene hooks, and a lot of fun!
HOWEVER, for reasons relating to metaplot, any experiment involving clockwork or complex mechanisms, any experiment involving complex alchemy, or anything involving trying to confer a blessing on an object? In order for any of those sort of things to succeed, they /must/ be GM'd by staff (i.e., put in as an @action, rolls done for it, and the metaplot considerations taken into account). Because the closer you come to success in the design, the greater the chance is of something going horribly wrong in an unexpected way.
But as long as none of the experiments actually /succeed/, feel free to keep playing calamitous mad science without staff oversight; have things blow up and completely mess up your lab or workspace, have clockwork devices fall apart as the springs snap and embed cogs in the wall, have the formula you're trying to brew stain the floor (or your hands!) an interesting color for a week, those sort of results.
And I'm certain none of this will go horribly wrong for any of you; as the poster we have hanging in the lab at my workplace says, "SCIENCE: So Far, So Good!"
Cheers!
THIS IS TOTALLY FINE. I want to stress that first! The mishaps of unsuccessful mad science are great RP fodder and scene hooks, and a lot of fun!
HOWEVER, for reasons relating to metaplot, any experiment involving clockwork or complex mechanisms, any experiment involving complex alchemy, or anything involving trying to confer a blessing on an object? In order for any of those sort of things to succeed, they /must/ be GM'd by staff (i.e., put in as an @action, rolls done for it, and the metaplot considerations taken into account). Because the closer you come to success in the design, the greater the chance is of something going horribly wrong in an unexpected way.
But as long as none of the experiments actually /succeed/, feel free to keep playing calamitous mad science without staff oversight; have things blow up and completely mess up your lab or workspace, have clockwork devices fall apart as the springs snap and embed cogs in the wall, have the formula you're trying to brew stain the floor (or your hands!) an interesting color for a week, those sort of results.
And I'm certain none of this will go horribly wrong for any of you; as the poster we have hanging in the lab at my workplace says, "SCIENCE: So Far, So Good!"
Cheers!