I am new to these forums, and I hope I am posting this in the right place.

Now that, that is out of the way... I have been kicking around ideas in my head for designing and I have an idea for a game mechanic I want to get some opinions on.

With regards to modern firearms, what are your opinions on using a perception attribute over a agility attribute for governing firing a weapon. My thought is that unless you are taking the time to aim the gun it is governed by perception. You don't see where the gun is pointing when you draw it you instinctively know where it is and your full conscious concentration is on the target when you pull the trigger. Agility in my opinion is more for governing balance and other full body activities such as gymnastics, not firing a weapon. I thinking that perception would be added to your firearms skill unless you are aiming, it which case I think that agility would be more appropriate.

I would like to hear people thoughts on this, and if you could steer my to research this topic I would be appreciative.

It's a good idea as far as it goes. Back in the day, when I was searching for the One True RPG (as I think perhaps you are) I used a similar breakdown, having fired weapons depend on mental stats.

Just a word of warning, though. You have entered the Forge. Prepare to have your assumptions questioned. That's all I'm gonna say . . . :)

I agree. Agility has almost nothing to do with how well you can shoot. Perception (especially depth perception) seems to be the best natural ability for it although training and experience would be much more important, I think.

P.S. I see you're in Yucaipa. I went to YHS in 87-88. Could you be anyone I know?

I could easily see an agility attribute being used for shooting, particularly when shooting from the hit or not bothering to aim. That's because the shooter is working from muscle memory and aligning the weapon with the pointed finger -- what my finger points out, I can shoot.

Another option is strength. Without strength to hold a heavy firearm, the weapon is going to miss, because the barrel is sagging down.

Another option is intelligence. After all, if the target is hidden or camouflaged, only intelligence is going to let you realise that the target can be shot at a vulnerable point.

Similarly for willpower. Only by having the will to hold the weapon steady on the target, realising that you're killing someone, and accepting that fact, could one possibly shoot someone in cold blood.

And so too for appearance. :) Only with the distraction of an attractive face, can one sneakily get a gun out in time to defeat an attacker.

:)

Wow, everyone is helpful already, I like it... To answer quozl, no you don't know me I am afraid. I just move to Yucaipa in July, I graduate from Laguna Beach High School in 1987 so we were kind of close.

Based I what I have heard already I am really leaning towards a perception based roll for snap shoot firearms, the idea being that your hand, eye coordination (which I think comes from perception) is more important.

Now if you were aiming I am leaning towards agility, my dad was a world champion target shooter in the 50's and aiming is a lot more about body control than anything else.

If any has anymore I thoughts I would love to hear them. I am glad to see the warm welcome to the forums, I have few more questions I won't to pose to the group in the next few days.

ZeOtter,

Attributes which could be absolutely essential in this situation:


agility
manual dexterity
luck
control
reflexes
will power
hand-eye coordination
intelligence
perception
any specific sense
intuition
training
knowledge


Even if you accounted for all factors, you would still need to weight for how important they might be in the particular situation... if you want to tie a skill to attributes.

Is your journey really necessary?

What do you gain by linking skills and attributes in the first place?

I'm going to throw a wrench in the works and mention something no one else has yet.

In Nomine (by Steve Jackson Games) included Precsion in their set of attributes, to cover exactly this sort of thing.

The ability, for example, to whip around 80 degrees or so to your right upon seeing something out of the corner of your eye, and not end up overcompensating and shooting past your target.

Or the ability to keep your sights on a moving target.

Or the ability to put a slug from a high-powered rifle through your enemy sniper's scope and into their eye.

Just a thought.

-- Ben

[Edit: In retrospect, Mark Johnson touched on this with a couple of items on his list, notably hand-eye coord.]

ZeOtter--It's probably not what you call your attribute, but how you define it.

Multiverser uses a ranged strike value for ranged attacks; it's derived from two basic attributes, hand/eye and intuition. Intuition would cover a lot of what you mean by perception, I think (noticing things out of the corner of your eye, processing inconsistencies in the environment to tell you when you should react). Hand/eye also covers some of what you want, as it's the ability to make your actions line up well with your perceptions (that is, although we call it hand/eye, it would include the ability to kick an object in the dark based on listening to the sound it makes).

Yet as someone has already hinted (and I'm surprised you haven't been barraged on this point already), why are you using an attribute for gunfire anyway?

It's being asked because there's a hint in your posts that you're planning on using an attribute+skill system. If you've got a good solid reason why you have to do it that way, more power to you (and don't misunderstand me--Multiverser uses an attribute+skill system, and has good solid reasons for doing so). But if you're just doing it because that's how these things are done, you may very well be making the mistake everyone else makes.

So to step back,

• Are you using some variation of an attribute+skill system?• Do skill numbers serve any other function, mechanically, in the game?• Is there a reason why you're doing it this way beyond that that's the way it's done in other games?


--M. J. Young

You guys caught me, my system is in the very first stages of development and what I am doing is trying to get a feel for what other people think. I am starting with a attribute + skill system because that is what I know.

When I started out with this game I wasn't sure how I was going to handle mechanics I just thought I had a really good story to tell. As I started jotting down ideas the system just started to immerge and I really didn't start thinking about till I found your wonderful little site here.

You all have sent me in some new directions I want to play around with, but I always take a day or two before I write anything down to let it perkelate in my head. Please keep the ideas coming I really do appreciate the constructive criticism.

If firearm use is something really central to your game, you might want to include a statistic that more closely aligns with the skill. Something like precision (as noted above) or hand-eye coordination.

If you are creating the game, you aren't stuck with a predetermined set of attributes. You don't have to choose between Perception and Agility. You don't even need to have stats called Perception and Agility.

Stuart

Actually, Stuart, if the game centers around Firearms use, he may want to go further and have a Firearms stat. Which would be a representation of how well all the sorts of things in Mark's post come together in this character.

All stats are made of components, and you can endlessly subdivide. Thus Strength can be Upper Body Strength, and Lower Body Strength. Still both are important to doing a dead lift of a great weight.

The question designers need to ask is at what level of breakdown the delineations are interesting.

And ask another question. Is there any use for perception outside of firearms? Is it really something that you want central to what's being explored. Because you can't include everything. I can give you a list of stats sixty or seventy long easy that still woudn't be exhaustive. At some point you have to decide on what area of game play a stat is going to cover, and define it broadly enough to do that.

Now are there more intuitive concepts to describe these areas than others? Probably. Thing is, without knowing what the area is, it's hard to suggest a suitable term.

How important is shooting in this game of yours? Important enought that you need to differentiate between say handguns and longarms? Or is it just a part of the character's overall combat effectiveness.

So, we need more info to help, really. Until then these posts are all going to be guesses and generic examples of how other games handle it.

In the end the stat wil be defined by what the rules say it can be used for in the game, not by the terms used.

Mike

Both a surgeon and a marksman may be masters of precision. Still, I don't want to depend on the surgeon to shoot the pursuing enemies or for the marksman to remove my gall bladder.

The reason I started this topic is my work centers around the modern world, and in every modern RPG I have played firearms played a big part. What I want to refined in my game starts with how firearms are handled.

Please realized that all the ideas I have here are in the germination stage and will change over time. I am now moving away from a attribute + skill system. and have it just an attribute system with skills used to modify rolls. So to fire a weapon you would roll your precision attribute and it would be modified by a skill score.

I was also thinking maybe at character creation players could buy bonus dice to use in the rolls, to give it a more heroic feel. You could by so many points in certain dice, like 2 points for a four sided, three points for a six sided, etc... You can add these dice to rolls whenever you like but the pool replenishes slowly so characters have to think about what they spend them on.

I used the precision + firearms idea to see first what this forum is like, and next to start my research on the system I want to create. I have a lot of wild ideas in my head but they take time to developed and I work best getting feedback as soon as the ideas become concrete enough to write down.

Please keep the critiques coming =)

I don't want to sound like I'm knocking your ideas, because they sound like a good start too me, but I think you're missing the point of some of the attribute + skill naysayers. At least some of them mean get rid of one or the other completely. So if the game was about, say, "Motorcycles, Motels, Musclecars and Massive Handguns" then when you look down at your character sheet you'd see a list like:

Vette: Driving big ole cars!
Hawg: You better know what this refers to!
Con: Gettin' away without payin' yer tab!
Gun: Lead makes things dead!
Run: Move boy, MOVE!


No perception or agility to speak of, just the stuff that actually matters to the game at hand. Of course that doesn't work for everyone. I'm partial to attribute+skill myself, but it does simplify game design when you get rid of extraneous detail.

Now I have the urge to go watch a 70's style road movie. Huh. Well, if it wasn't for the Forge I wouldn't have considered THAT as a roleplaying concept!

Dwayne

ZeOtter wrote: The reason I started this topic is my work centers around the modern world, and in every modern RPG I have played firearms played a big part. What I want to refined in my game starts with how firearms are handled.

ZeOtter wrote: I am now moving away from a attribute + skill system. and have it just an attribute system with skills used to modify rolls. So to fire a weapon you would roll your precision attribute and it would be modified by a skill score.

what Dalek of God wrote: I don't want to sound like I'm knocking your ideas, because they sound like a good start too me, but I think you're missing the point of some of the attribute + skill naysayers. At least some of them mean get rid of one or the other completely.

I think one of the reasons why I have been stumbling through this is I have hang ups about how to accurately games model human learning. I originally went to college to get a degree in teaching (which I didn't get), so I did pickup a lot on how people learn.

My idea is a skill tree where you have a general skill heading such as computers (I am a network admin, I picked something easy for me as an example). Under computers when you first get the skill there will be sub-skills like; basic operation, e-mail, using the Internet, etc... As you gain more levels in it you will have access to more sub-skills, to follow the computer example, you could get; networking, programming, hacking, etc... Some sub skills could have pre-requisites like you can't get hacking until you have networking and programming.

The idea is that your skill (computer) will be your target number for your attribute roll. Right now I want my attributes to be assigned as die types, like you have 2d10 strength, etc... So if my "Intelligence" is 2d6 when you buy computer as a skill you start at lets say 8 you need to roll an 8 or lower to accomplish what you want. But you can only use the skill if you have the sub skill the governs what you want to accomplish. So when you first are learning how to use computers you can't hack into a secure system you have study for quite a bit of time before you have the knowledge to do that, and before you can learn how to hack you have to know how networks work, and how computer code is used to make the computer do what you want it to.

I have not "crunched" the numbers on this yet to see if the probabilities of the dice mechanics are reasonable but I am comfortable with the overall concept and think that once I play with the numbers I can get it to work in this form.

Learning a skill is a growing process that can take some people a life time to master, I don't think that a player with a high intelligence score, a computer skill of 1, and a lucky roll should be able to hack into Microsoft’s network. You need to first learn the basics of computers, turning it on, knowing the steps to take to create a word processing document, etc... Then you can start studying up on how networks are put together, how security works, etc... After that you want to understand programming and how to alter code to get software to do something is was not intended to do. After you are proficient in all of that I would say you had a reasonable chance to hack a secure system. Even after all of that your first couple of try’s are going to be a lot of trail and error but you have a shot at it.

I was kicking around the idea of giving the sub skill a score from 1 to 3 to reflect experience, 1 being novice, 2 being proficient, and 3 being master. To illustrate this idea following the hacking example, if you try to hack Microsoft your first time you have a dismal chance of success but you at least have a chance to know when you are in too deep and get out before you get caught. With hacking 1 you are a novice that could probably get into someone else’s personal computer at home and go through their hard drive when you find them on the Internet, but that is about it. To get Hacking 1 you would need to have your pre-requisites (this case programming and networking) at certain levels, I would say one needs to be level 3 and the rest can be level 2.

The setting is the modern world where magic is discovered by science to be real, and the world is trying to come to grips with the fact that people can cause earthquakes, summon demons (of a sort), and fly without mechanical aid. The game focus’s on what will society do to come to grips with this fundamental change, and what else is out there they haven’t discovered yet.

I apologize for the long winded post, but the ideas just starting percolating out and I know better than to try and stop them once they start flowing.

I would love to hear more of your thoughts on this, your posts on this thread are what have gotten me this far with the system and I really appreciate your help.

Hi 'otter,

My question is: why should a role-playing game be in any way concerned with modelling how people learn?

If its topic is such learning (say, a drama in which an adult struggles to learn to read), then fine. But an adventure story? Even if it concerns the character growing up to be a warrior, which only a few do, the actual process of learning generally concerns ethics and maturity, not the moment-to-moment skill acquisition.

What I'm asking is, are you interested in creating/playing a game about shooting people or a game about learning how to shoot?

Best,
Ron

The first edition of Paranoia had a skill tree something like what ZeOtter describes. They dropped it in the second edition, no doubt realizing that, of all games, Paranoia should be (as Ron says) "a game about shooting people, rather than a game about learning how to shoot".

Hey, all :)

To be fair, I don't think this kind of tree models 'how do people learn to shoot', but rather, 'ok, if you know how to shoot, what else can I assume you also know'.

Also, this whole discussion seems to be deeply rooted in the 'characters must improve over time' paradigm. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Cheers,

J.

Mike Holmes wrote:
Both theives a warriors need to be dexterous, but I wouldn't trust the first to win a fight, or the second to be able to steal anything. Yet most game systems will tell us that there is a correllation. What you're arguing against is stat/skill systems in general, or the extent to which one relies on the other. Or am I missing your point?

ZeOtter wrote: The setting is the modern world where magic is discovered by science to be real, and the world is trying to come to grips with the fact that people can cause earthquakes, summon demons (of a sort), and fly without mechanical aid. The game focus’s on what will society do to come to grips with this fundamental change, and what else is out there they haven’t discovered yet.

I gave a very brief description of the setting because I strongly feel that mechanics of the system should enhance and give flavor to the setting of the game. I really do not support generic systems, I have played a few of them and tried to give them several chances but I honestly can't stand them.

While I am sure there are a lot of people who would disagree with me games like Deadlands, and In Nomine really worked for me because their mechanics supported the atmosphere they were trying to convey. Deadlands with their poker chips and decks of cards (not the d20 remake), and In Nomine with their 666 dice mechanics I think really added something to the game, and really let the players immerse them selves in the setting of the game.

To answer Mark Johnson’s post, the background for my game hasn't established how society has dealt with the fact that magic and the occult exist, I want to have the characters be a part of how society comes to grips with this paradigm shift. I really want to explore the themes that come with drastic change in society as a whole, the fear, the hatred, the hope, etc...

The setting is that science has discovered magic exists and how to use it. The information has recently leaked to the public and who can figure out the "code" are starting to pop up all over the world. The arcane practitioners of magic that have been around for centuries are more than a little upset that all of their secrecy is for naught and now upstart wiz kids are using shortcuts to power that took them years to learn. The worlds governments are exploring the possibilities of this "new science", people with no idea the power they are wielding are unleashing things on this Earth that should not be and social and religious groups are trying to come to grips with the ramifications of what magic means and how it effects their beliefs.

I really think to help immerse the players into the atmosphere of the game I need to give them a firm grounding in the mundane to really hammer my themes home. The mechanics I have mentioned are my first attempt at this. I don't want to make things overly complex for the people reading my game but I don't want to swing the other way like White Wolf did and end up with a system where skills are so generic as to make them almost meaning less. In our society learning skills are a little more complex than that, and as we are becoming more, and more specialized in our roles. I want the feel of everyday life to clash with the setting and form the basis of conflict in the game.

The other reason I pursuing the system of have posted is to emphasize more individuality between players. Like in 7th Sea 2 players can have the same skill that has different sub skills or emphasis for what they know.

I am wondering if I should start a new thread for this discussion since it seems a few are confused that I have moved beyond the original topic of what governs shoot a gun to the basic structure of my character creation system.

I would have to wonder whether an attribute would be the best way to go for firearms in particular. I am on a junior shooting team at the moment and can say that the majority of shooting is based on one's experience/training and "situational modifiers." Experience is the most important factor (i.e. skill rating) as an experienced shooter is so much better than a novice that there is little comparison. Also, minute differances in body position can make a fair differance, especially at a range.

Equipment comes into it as well, as a sling is always nice. Also, the weapon itself matters. Pistols are much less accurate than rifles (kind of common sense, but still) but differant models can also have their own accuracies within a group. A good shooter taking his time with a good rifle and good ammo can get shots into the same bullet hole with pistols or rifles.

The problem I have with assigning an attribute to firearms marksmanship is that none of them really fit. Strength is marginally applicable, but if you have a sling or hold it correctly, the weight of even a fairly heavy rifle will not be significant (and I have a relatively low muscle strength). Agility isn't a factor in non-combat shooting at least (I've never shot in combat, so I cannot comment on that. Maybe an ex-army person could talk about that). The more you move, the more you miss. Even rocking slightly on your feet in a standing position can throw a shot off by several inches at 50 feet.

Perception is arguable as well, skill is more important. My father is blind in one eye, and has to wear glasses to see properly at all in the other (a low perception stat if I ever heard of one). And yet, he is the best shooter I have personally seen. He can, with an accurized AR15, get bullets into the same hole with fair consistancy at 200 yards. He wasn't terribly in practice at the time either. When he was younger (still blind in one eye due to an early childer accident, but the other worked fine), he once won money on a bet to see whether he could pound a nail into a tree with a bullet at about 100 yards. He won that bet. Thats some of my personal experience with firearms, I hope it might help.

From a design perspective, if you are going to have attributes affect shooting, I would use Perception for Long Guns and Agility for Handguns/SMGs. I say this for two reasons. One, it makes more sense, as rifles are better used at longer ranges, while pistols aren't good beyond a fairly close range. Also, if it pleases you, you might want to seperate Long Guns from Small Arms. They require the same general skills but nevertheless, they dont overlap too much. I am a good rifle marksman, but I am horrible poor at pistols. I would keep them together if you do not put much emphasis on combat, but if combat is a significant factor in your game, you may want to seperate them. I hope I helped.

Ze,

So you want to provide a game in which players really feel like the system describes a world consistent with ours, right?

Well, look at Solacus' experience. In his example, he points out how skill is key, and attributes add only in certain less than optimum circumstances. What you could do, is to just go off of skill, and then, if the appropriate conditions occur, allow attributes to cancel penalties. So, strength makes it so that you don't acquire a firing penalty until fatigue sets in. Agility allows you to cancel some penalties for moving.

Do this on a case-by-case basis.

That would be very realistic, IMO.

Mike

Ahoy, :)

I suddenly felt the need to point out my own experience with small arms.

I did basic officer training in the army (3 months), and that included very rudimentary shooting practice with a 9mm pistol and an automatic assault rifle. Amazingly enough, having never handled a firearm before, I was the second best shooter in the company. (A 'company' in the portuguese army is somewhere between 100 and 200 men. Since we were in an instruction unit, we were closer to the 200 mark, I forget how many exactly.) Now, some of the people in the company had alledgedly shot guns before. In fact, two of them were on loan from some portuguese-speaking african country (which one, again, I forget) and already had extensive military training. One of those two was the guy that shot better than me, the other one came in fifth.

My conclusion: some sort of attribute was definitely playing a part, here. And I'd venture it wasn't agility. At close to 200 lbs, I'm no epitome for cat-like grace. Thus, some sort of hand-eye coordination would be indicated. Note that I'm not exactly going against Solacus, here, as none of those guys had ever done any competitive shooting, that I know of.

Finally, to really complicate matters, I couldn't throw a rock in a straight line to save my life. I'm not half-bad with detailed mechanical work, though.

Cheers,

J.

I would say some level of "perception" has a bearing on skill in shooting, as well as a mental "relaxation focus" and "hand/eye co-ordination".
This may very well be an "attribute" working.

While perception isn't very trainable, the "relaxation focus" level and "hand/eye co-ordination" is.

It is common too for people to hear the words of the trainer, then not actually follow them when excited or stressed.

It is quite possible that you actually followed the trainer's instructions, where those who've shot before may not be or are following poor habits learned previously.

any firing range teachers out there?

And around and around we go.

See, everyone in real life has a different opinion on what sort of attribute backs what skill. And this is problematic because in the end all that attributes are are groupings of abilities.

That is to say that the only thing that can completely and accurately portray the ability to use firearms would be a rating of your abioity to use firearms.

Because in the end, for each individual it's going to be multiple and unique qualities that make that person good at what they're good at. Any attempt whatsoever to divide these underpinning abilities into just a few categorizations that supposedly overlap is doomed to failure.

So you have one of two options. Just make a choice, and accept that it cannot be totally realistic. Or, just list all abilities as single abilities, and have no "default" or "supporting" stats. This is the less used option, and people reject it because it's an "end description" sort of mechanic rather than a "begining description" sort of mechanic. Despite the fact that they both work just as well in play.

You can think about something like this forever, and get a million different opinions on the subject. In the end an educated guess will work as well as anything else.

Mike

Mike Holmes wrote: That is to say that the only thing that can completely and accurately portray the ability to use firearms would be a rating of your [ability] to use firearms.

The first problem, that of "starting skill" is one that has to be addressed by the character enumeration system (including generation and advancement) I agree that not all characters will have the same starting default. But how to set that default is another matter. My point has been that if firearms are that important to the game, that they ought to be rated from the start, and rated using whatever method the system uses. This still leaves the question of skills that are not so enumerated. In that case, I see two options. Either start them all at a basic default which is unrealistic but simple, or allow for some sort of on-the-spot calculation that might involve something similar to the chargen system, or even randomization. Lot's of potential ways to do this in play as neccessary. I can envision some system where the player argues his other abilities, and spends points to back it up, possibly combined with a random roll.

Anyhow, as to the idea of "supporting skills" what I'm describing is an End Descriptive system where all attributes and abilities are already considered. So, the skill rating selected already has taken into consideration all possible "supporting abilities". (This, BTW, is the only simple way to achieve actual point balance).

The point is that this is the most accurate way to enumerate an ability. It doesn't provide the sort of support for underlying analysis that you seem to think is needed, MJ, but then I'm not sure this is sought. If it is, I've said that the other alternative is to simply pick some method of assigning defaul support, and go with it, despite the fact that it can't possibly be accurate. Most games do, and it works fine.

There just is no perfect solution. One has to pick between what they see as the lesser of two evils. Either have no underlying rationalizing support and be more accurate, or have such support and fail to be accurate. Which is worse? You decide. I can play either.

Mike

P.S. this is treading very close to territory covered by Mike's Standard Rant #4: Stat/Skill systems.

My observations on handling firearms whilst growing up on the farm:

I'm of the opinion that both "manual dexterity" and "perception" come into play. Probably perception moreso than dexterity. It is much harder to shoot straight in low light situations when you can't focus on the sights well. It's also interesting to note that most people shoot handguns more accurately with their _weak_ hand, probably because your muscles twitch more in your strong hand.

But IMO these statistics come to nil when compared to the actual skill of the shooter. My father, who is getting rather old and can't see so well any more still routinely kills varmints shooting offhand at distances of 200 yards or more. I could never do that even if I didn't drink so much coffee.

So I'd say go with a firearms stat or something. It's hard to say really.

One big point that I'd like to make that hasn't been covered yet (and you didn't really ask for, but I'll tell ya anyway :) is that I feel that the damage caused by a firearm (and I will extend this to such things as melee weapons as well, though I have no experience with such things) is _directly_ linked to one's skill and has _very_ little to do with with the relative stopping power of a particular cartridge. It all depends on how vital a spot you hit something in. Sure, it would be pretty hard to kill a mutant super-bear with a .22, but if you consider any centerfire rifle or handgun cartridge, I think it holds. It always irritates me to no end when I open up a firearms sourcebook and see such wide variances in damage values.

But that's all probably more detail than you want to go into. :)

I want to thank everyone who has posted to this thread, you have really got me thinking in new directions, which is exactly what I was hoping for. I think I have found a mechanic I am happy with and will talk about it as soon as I think it is polished enough.

I have had a really hard time trying to get my game off the ground, I sometimes have a hard time motivating myself. I don't have anyone to game with at the moment that I can talk game creation ideas with. I moved in July to Yucaipa and cannot find a game store anywhere in California's inland empire that hasn't closed down.

I have been driving my wife nuts and my non-gaming friends nuts talking about the ideas I have for this game.

So The Forge as become my refuge, and I really appericate each of you for taking the time to read and repond to my posts, as vague as they are.

Happy birthday, and thank God(s) for you The Forge =)

If you need a gaming fix, or get your game ready to playtest. THere is a whole group of folks from the Forge and such that meet for gaming over the internet.
We meet at Yahoo Group #indie-netgaming
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indie-netgaming/

Feel free to stop by,

Bob McNamee wrote: If you need a gaming fix, or get your game ready to playtest. THere is a whole group of folks from the Forge and such that meet for gaming over the internet.
We meet at Yahoo Group #indie-netgaming
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/indie-netgaming/

I forget who is running Mac and Linux in our group...That Chat java thingy on Magicstar doesn't seem to work for anybody.
Nathan? is it Raven who runs the Mac?

It is I who am the Macuser, Bob.

And the chat he's talking about is the Yahoo one. Which we don't use at all. We play by all sorts of different media, but not using the Yahoo chat, for various reasons (one of which is that it sucks).

We mostly play via IRC and PBEM. I even have one game that we're doing by Wiki. So stop on by, and check it out. Your setup won't hinder you in the least.

Mike