How I learned to stop worrying and love The Pacifist.

[YBS]

Hey there guys, have a seat. Let's talk about my favorite quirk.

No, not Drunken Resilience, as much as I love making the barman mechanically relevant.

It's Pacifist. Pacifist is the best quirk because it re-teaches you how to play the game in ways you've forgotten. Now that you can't crit and throw and blast your way out of every conflict, you are forced to fall back on the ways you probably tried to play back when you first started. Now you have to talk your way through situations, or find ways to deal with people that physically cannot end in RR. Sure, I bet you just thought of some way to do it that I'm sure is very epic and robust, but the fact of the matter is you no longer have all of these ways to just kill the enemy.

There are a few examples of this that are even mechanical.

Now, instead of just flashing and smashing that rogue borg, you have to flash and unlock it - then use tools to actually disable them effectively.
Botanist loosing 1000 killer tomatoes? If you can't stab them, you might have to load something into a fire extinguisher that interacts with their chemistry.
Blob rush? Same thing, except even now you may have to just assist and facilitate the crew doing the violent labor.

What I'm trying to say is that it does force you to take on a new perspective to solving problems within the game.
Hardrolling pacifist has completely refreshed the game for me, in the sense that I don't have the safety net of valid harm to resolve conflict.

I recommend anyone who feels burnt out to try it. Sure, you will lose more. That is why it's -8 points.
I'm just here to tell you that it's worth trying.

I have stories to back this, but for now it's time to go to work.

[Jonathan Gupta]

I'll try it out.

[RaveRadbury]

Good thread

[Agux909]

Personally, I've found it's really good having multiple characters with different personalities and traits (you don't really need to use any quirks, but they help)

Playing one single static leads to it becoming an avatar of yourself, and one which you build all your reputation and perceived expectations over. There comes a moment in which you can't really pretend not knowing certain people, mechanics and OOC things, because you let this reputation define your character, instead of an actual personality. All of this, in the long run, can make playing said character stale and boring, since there's simply no variety, and it can lead to some serious burnout.

If your character might as well be named as your ckey, is it really a character? Let your character/s be imperfect and incompetent and certain things, make them hate/like different things. If you are friends with someone with a certain static, why can't you hate them with another static?

Pacifist forces you to change the way you play entirely, and it may feel refreshing because, guess what, playing differently for a change is great.

[Jonathan Gupta]

No I'm Jonathon Gupta, that doesn't make me sad at all It makes me feel like Jonathon Gupta.

[Agux909]

No I'm Jonathon Gupta, that doesn't make me sad at all It makes me feel like Jonathon Gupta.

Don't worry, you're a special case. You don't need to follow this advice at all.

[cacogen]

I used to always be a pacifist because latency makes attempting combat pointless but you get sick of not being able to hurt things when you need to.