TRPG General Chat - 2014-08-03

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1:22 AM

!!!?!!!??/??!!!?!!!?!!!????!!1??!???!!?!1?!!!?!!??

2

Q: What is the type of Touch of Gracelessness dexterity penalty?

Today I was reviewing my sorceress spell list for before our game tonight, and I came to the description of the 1st level spell "Touch of Gracelessness", specifically the text that describes the effect. According to the online SRD it reads as follows: The target takes a penalty to its Dexte...

pathfinder has ability damage and ability drain and penalties (which can apply to abilities)

Eeeyup.

It's ported pretty much unchanged from 3.5, so far as I can tell.

The reason being, implicitly, that you need so much variation in order to accurately depict the various kinds of ability-impacting effects the setting has to offer.

IE, subsystems = verisimilitude.

my mind is reeling a little

so, there's ability damage, which is temporary and restores over time

and there's ability drain, which could just be expressed as "permanent ability damage"

but then i reach the point where it describes the creature will gain temporary HP, which means it's a form of vampirism so it isn't that simple

(unless the creature's ability specifies otherwise)

there's also ability burn, which is ability damage that you can't magically heal

@Metool hrngh just so long as nothing refers to curing ability burn or whatever this is acceptable as shorthand for "ability damage you can't magically heal" and not a rules exception

1:37 AM

@JonathanHobbs And how messed up is it to have a feature which converts a permanent unit of competence into a temporary unit of endurance?

@BESW well, it doesn't convert it for the player who lost it, so it's more like a mind flayer going "NOM NOM NOM DELICIOUS" and gaining hp

It's a mechanic which causes one creature to endure long-lasting debility in exchange for another creature lasting another round in that fight.

in hindsight i'd be inclined to redesign these mechanics as just... ability damage.
ability drain -> "permanent ability damage"
ability drain with the vampirism -> "You deal 1d3 permanent ability damage and regain 5 temporary HP per point."
everything that cures ability drain -> "cures ability damage." so it cures regular ability damage too. who cares if it's permanent.
ability burn -> is NOT a concept, but just a writing shorthand for convenience of psionic classes to say "ability damage which cannot be cured magically." Nothing can interact with ability burn, because it isn't a thing on i…

ability score penalty? what's that? [shows it the door, specifically the one that leads to a 1,000 foot drop]

One does not simply redesign 3.5 subsystems.

@JonathanHobbs A penalty is temporary, and this one in particular has a duration of 1 round per caster level, a lot shorter than it would take for it to heal naturally, and I'm willing to bet things don't play nicely with ability damage that is healed after a short duration.

1:49 AM

Ability penalties heal over time; ability damage heals over longer time; ability drain does not heal and grants pathetic goodies to the inflictor.

(In all seriousness, 5 temp hp? That's enough extra buffer on your health to let you blink unhappily before you die.)

@BESW this is more like: "if i were designing the same thing from the ground up, what would i do so as to achieve a similar effect and not have my book channel nyarlathotep's graces"

2:14 AM

@BESW and yeah, at the stage you might be encountering monsters who can use ability drain (because it won't be horribly crippling forever at that point hopefully), an attack that deals 5hp is like a scrape on your knee or something

better yet: scrap the idea of ability drain completely because permanent reductions in competency is a terrible device of attack

Joshua Aslan Smith

hola

[wave]

@JonathanHobbs Spsh. Now read about energy drain.

2:35 AM

@BESW no plz

if i reach 5 insanity i'm going to have to relieve it by purging the world of 3.5e manuals

Ack, hit dice.

personally i have some pretty deep respect for both D&D 4e and Magic: the Gathering in that they have well-defined mechanics, and new effects are a combination of the existing mechanics, not an exception and addition to or layer upon the existing mechanics

(they introduce new abilities occasionally in M:tG, but at a manageable rate that does not turn into an exception pile because nothing cares about those abilities, it cares about the mechanics those abilities re-use)

like, Dredge: nothing cares about Dredge. Dredge is composed of card drawing, self-milling and other relevant mechanics. Things care about those mechanics.

things that help or hamper Dredge do so by interacting with the mechanics Dredge makes use of, not by mentioning Dredge itself

Help, there are artifacts with no school of magic to their auras, artifacts with all the schools, and artifacts with the Universal school and two others. [not MtG]

@Metool wait. The Universal school, and two others, but not 'all the schools'?

> A small number of spells (arcane mark, limited wish, permanency, prestidigitation, and wish) are universal, belonging to no school.

[watches Hobbs's brain melt]

2:46 AM

> Aura strong enchantment, necromancy, and universal; CL 20th

The idea behind "universal" is that every spell needs a school... but wizards have to choose schools they can't cast from... but some spells should be castable by all wizards... so we'll have a non-school school for those spells.

@BESW okay, so does universal mean every school or no school? i can understand universal in terms of magic.

but i can't understand it in terms of artifacts belonging to Universal.

Ah, that's fun.

See, artifacts are magic items.

You can use detect magic to figure out the school of spells used to create a magic item.

so Universal is neither "every school" nor "no school", it is its own school, that is in turn available to everyone

So if you need charm, enervation, and prestidigitation to make an artifact, it'll detect as enchantment, necromancy, and universal.

Right. It's supposed to be the "N/A" entry.

But they made it the not-any-other-school school instead.

2:51 AM

this is only barely good

and i must away. bye!

ttfn

I reiterate: Gah, hit dice.

I am imagining Cathy playing D&D.

Oh?

user image

2:56 AM

I see...

I'm really having trouble figuring out intent on this item. I need coffee.

Coffee is an excellent idea.

[cold brew + brown sugar + cinnamon + vanilla + vanilla soy milk]

3:12 AM

So this magical painting traps a creature, as the binding spell, and according to that spell, you can set a release condition based on observable things, as well as on name, identity, or alignment, but not on level, class, hit dice, or hit points.

But hit points are observable, because power word spells act on specific values... And hit dice are observable, because the painting "creates a duplicate of the subject that lasts for 1 day per Hit Die the creature possesses."

@Metool "Is released when the painting is viewed by a boy named Sue."

(Attempts to trick the painting by bringing it a man named Sioux were unsuccessful.)

Joking aside (but not speaking seriously either, as this is 3.5 and seriousness would be misplaced) "observable qualities" has always been a 3.5 bugaboo.

To the best of my knowledge they're defined per spell rather than as a standardised term.

3:28 AM

Alright... I'm still concerned, then, by how this artifact makes ability scores, ability modifiers, and hit dice observable things.

Probably a few other things have, too, like the wizard classic, sleep.

Ah well.

Hush, don't struggle. The logic will be gone soon.

4:06 AM

@Magician Thanks for the accept. I was hoping to get a clarification on Brian's comment, but it just vanished...

Yeah, not sure what happened to that.

Good morning, etc., etc.

Hi!

1 hour later…

5:24 AM

More Mystery Incorporated amusement:
Subtitle: [cows growling]

"Like, Scooby old pal, we're doing the 'gather around behind Velma while she researches things' thing. Care to join us?"

5:53 AM

....oh, Fred. I don't think "Hitting someone in the face with a shovel" counts as a trap.

3

@BESW Wait, it doesn't?

a trap is only a trap if Admiral Ackbar says it is

6:22 AM

Fate is tricky. I'm trying to write up stunts for a supers team extra, and realizing that half of my ideas are better expressed as aspects.

a lot of things in Fate can be aspects

Here, in case anyone wants to take a look and help out.

and even probably should

not all, but a lot

I'm trying to keep the number of extra aspects down, though, as it could easily get out of hand.

And, of course, I could be overthinking this and it could not be all that useful in-game...

these look like they should be stunts

6:32 AM

I've had Officially Sanctioned as a stunt originally, +2 to Rapport when dealing with authorities. It can probably go back into that category. But trying to write up Training Facilities (a la Danger Room), I realized it basically comes down to "we've trained for this exact thing", which is best handled as an invocation of an aspect.

yeah

I think part of what you want to look at is how the item you are looking at is intended to be used

and how it mechanically works

+2 to doing a specific thing with a specific skill is generally a stunt

but anything that starts to get more broad than a specific type of thing done with a specific skill is going to more likely need to be an aspect

if you specified a narrow kind of training, like hand to hand combat, especially with a very specific weapon, that can be a stunt

Yeah. I started with teams just having a high concept (and any temporary advantages inflicted upon them), but it seems like some of the staples of the genre are best described as additional aspects

though you could also make an aspect of like "I love my Samurai Katana"

I think specific training better fits on an individual character sheet.

yeah

it probably does, I am just saying that anything like that needs to be pretty specific and narrow to work as a stunt

6:40 AM

True.

Do the stunts look reasonable?

I'm fairly comfortable with the kind that give +2 to a narrow field or allow to use a different skill in a narrow field, but the third kind, the ones that just alter the rules, are a different story.

[wanders over to look]

I am not sure

those are always hard

Eeep, people!

Team Transport feels a little shaky. The others are great.

@BESW Yeah, it's basically a way to not worry about logistics of getting to the adventure. I'm not sure if it's worthwhile either.

6:49 AM

Suggestion: make an extra that provides the team with a Resources skill and stress track.

Hmmm. Probably not a good fit for our game, but would definitely work for others.

A player had actually requested we don't include a media stress track, as they didn't want to focus on managing PR too much.

Are there other team/headquarters prominent examples that I'm missing?

There's the Wise Butler, +2 to Empathy to overcome mental stress?..

Batcaves Everywhere?

Well Networked?

@BESW Wouldn't that be an individual stunt, though? I guess not necessarily.

(see also: army of homeless orphans)

@Magician If the team has got boltholes and supply caches squirrelled away around the city....

@BESW So what would this actually do?

6:59 AM

@Magician Once per session, the team has a contact, informant, or fan in just the right place to help out.

That works. I've called it Popular Support.

The waiter lets you look at the guest list, the cop tips you off, the night watchman smuggles you onto the grounds...

Daphne: "You know, Freddy, that kidnapping really turned out to be a great experience for me!"

Good morning* to you all.

* - morning only available in selected timezones. Other times of day will be substituted where appropriate.

[wave]

3 hours later…

10:18 AM

Morning.

Ish

11:06 AM

An observation from last night's game, unrelated to horror gaming: if you make something up and don't try to explain it, no matter how ridiculous or verifiably asinine, the party will explain it for you.

In this case, I invented the "ascot cinch," a variant on the tie clip, and two players immediately began explaining it to the third player.

(Apparently it's a decorative bracelet-y band that you incorporate into the knot of the neckband to keep it from coming undone.)

11:35 AM

hey, it works

12:31 PM

what's a neckband?

is it a tie?

A little orchestra that you carry around your neck.

Joking aside, I've mostly heard it used to refer to stuff on headphones, cameras etc so they wouldn't fall too far from your head.

Is there really a neckband for headphones?

[Zachiel just deals with them falling case by case]

And passing the cable under your shirt usually works, unless you're shirtless.

@Zachiel One of my friends has one at least. I don't think they're that common though.

They're wireless, so the cable trick won't work :)

12:48 PM

Oh well if they're wireless you need something not to lose them, right

@Zachiel A tie is a kind of neckband.

In this case, an ascot is a wider, thicker neckband, like a cross between a tie and a scarf.

It's the orange thing Fred wears in Scooby Doo.

yeah

I know that is what it is, but it was a little hard to explain

1:15 PM

@BESW what's this regarding? :o

@JonathanHobbs I just finished watching Mystery, Incorporated.

It's really rather brilliant, I think.

oh wow alright xD

well it's a trap in the sense an ambush is a trap maybe?

1:51 PM

@BESW well it did seem to make some semblance of sense and i think that is the key, though i don't think the description i ended up with is the same as the description you provided at first

@BESW okay actually I think this is fantastic upon reflection

picture the scene:

the characters creep into the room

something seems amiss

they do their perception check type thing, they notice wires and hints of contraptions. the room must be trapped!

they get to work looking over everything, trying to carefully disarm it...

then a mysterious assailant just steps out of the shadows and hits someone in the face with a shovel.

Ha-haaaa! You fools! There wasn't a trap at all! It was just a distraction so I could sneak up on you with a shovel! That was the real trap!

(I am totally going to do exactly this one day.)

3 hours later…

4:36 PM

So, got a convention, not an rpg convention but general "geek stuff", coming up and I'm thinking of trying something a bit different.
The guy running it appears to have mostly 1-hour slots (something I decided was far to short at the event I help organize). I was thinking about going for a set of linked games, each part of a larger plot and giving insight into the setting they take part in. Most will be driven by previous games, but if I don't have a break in between some might be simultaneous or otherwise disconnected, possibly operating in batches.

Sounds neat in concept.

System-wise it would be really light, characters pregenerated with perhaps room for a minor customization.

@Dave With slots that short I'd go pure pregens

Or a system where character features could be bought in-play, due to the time constraint it could work.

@Phil, true. I prefer to give them some option, but agree that it might not be possible,

trouble is, by the time you've given then the opportunity to customise, you've lost a quarter of your time slot

4:40 PM

I think you may be overestimating how much I mean by customization.
Pick-a-word-from-a-list-of-four is what I was thinking.

Do that twice and they've at least shaped the character.

That sounds doable

A bit like certain parts of Dungeon World chargen

Yeah, guess where I got the idea!

But with actual game effect.

5:14 PM

Ooh, new face in chat! (at least I don't think I've seen you before)

I'm not on much.

Hi.

Hello!

I'm just writing up a sort of "Social Contract Guide" for GMs at a convention I'm doing.

Or, I'm putting off doing so!

Heh, I know that feeling.

5:33 PM

Trying to not make it look like more work for GMs, or a license for them to kick out players without trying to sort it out. We had a terrible GM last year who put a few folks off, and I don't want a repeat.

5:47 PM

It's way too long.

Out of curiosity, what con?

Alcon.

It's a UK anime convention.

6:18 PM

Hello @Dave

Hello @Zachiel

It's still too long, but I think it'll be ok.

One hour solts? Bring minigames like "What Is A Roleplaying Game"

Hopefully they'll have someone else for that, and I can do something weird!

Also, I meant my document was too long. Mind taking a look?

6:51 PM

Actually yes, I'm not really present now

No worries.

Maybe when I'm back tonight

A friend that lives away from here is in town for a few days, I'm going to the welcome party.

Byeeeeeeeeeee.

Have fun.

2 hours later…

9:01 PM

@Dave Hi!

@BESW, what a coincidence! I just stumbled upon this: imgur.com/gallery/DGrzs

It appears historical English private soldiers and guards used red coats as well - although not quite as fabulous as the ones in the pictures I posted the last time.

Cool.

2 hours later…

10:41 PM

@Grubermensch [wave]

I exist

I ran FAE

It was... oddd

Do tell!

one of the players had a lot of difficulty narrating

also i had difficulty working some of the rules

and forgot how to count, which is always fun

Oh, counting. Bah.

yeah i ran some mobs but forgot to count the stress boxes correctly

so they fell off too quickly

the one player really was looking for a lot more structure defining what would be possible in the game

rather than a sort of open-ended "do things!" directive

10:47 PM

Ah, yeah.

a lot of "I [approach]-ily [action]"

That can be a challenge--some people take a while to adjust to that playstyle, and it's not a playstyle for everyone.

she also had difficulty coming up with aspects, for kinda the same reason

The other player, who DMs an AD&D/2e game I play in, played better, but said he still preferred a more structured system.

I've noticed that Approach+Action style narration is a pitfall of Fate games. It can be overcome, but I've got a rant about it upstream on the chat somewhere.

it's really something common to basically all games

because people run out of ideas eventually

10:50 PM

Hmm. Disagree. It's a common problem in games where mechanics can substitute for narration.

Jul 17 at 1:41, by BESW

By contrast, games of Roll For Shoes and Cthulhu Dark, because their mechanics are so incredibly sparse and broad, demand more thoughtful narration for every action because there's nothing in the game system to prop up lazy narrative.

but how long that takes differs on how much experience the person has with improvisation and how good they are at mentally stepping into the roll

@BESW I think it's more that there's a selection bias at work. Mixed up with a learning effect.

It's interesting to me that Fate falls neatly across the divide between "the mechanics don't tell me what I can do," and "I can substitute 'what I do' narration with 'what mechanic I use' description."

Playing a system which rewards or assumes more narration means you are getting more practice with narrating, so you get better at it.

And the reverse comes from systems that are very mechanical.

I'd agree, but when we go back to Fate with the same players, they revert to mechanical description really easily.

@BESW From RFS you mean?

10:54 PM

@Grubermensch And Cthulhu Dark, and Pilgrims of the Flying Temple, and so forth.

Games like RFS, CD, and PotFT literally don't have mechanics which can be used as sufficient description for actions.

Yeah so you're right about that too.

CD has one action mechanic: roll to determine degree of success.

Yeah I feel like the one mechanic systems though make it hard to model complex moves.

If we take Fate for instance, I think Creating an Advantage makes it much more interesting than RFS.

But you have to be able to bring that narration.

The complexity spectrum of RPGs is something I'm still trying to wrap my head around for my own MLP system design.

Maybe it's a reward issue

so at the one end, you've got RFS, et al. where you have to describe because that's literally all that you can do

And then you've got something like D&D at the other end, where there's very little benefit to extra narration.

Fate is almost more D&D-like in one sense.

Because the mechanics assume you narrate. But at the same time, there's no real necessity to because the actions are provided, and there's no reward for narration.

Contrast this to Exalted, where the mechanics allow you to narrate, but also allow you to just do mechanics things. But when you narrate, the GM is encouraged to bestow rewards explicitly for the narration itself.

Both an immediate reward (extra dice in the die pool) and a resource replenishment.

11:02 PM

Yeah. I have trouble with systems that give the GM power to declare what is and isn't "good RP," but games which can be played purely mechanically are increasingly lackluster to me.

Now on the one hand you can talk about how this knights the GM as Defender of the One True Way to Role-Play

yeah

however, it provides a way to overcome that sloth that leads to "I hit him" style play

I really feel like having the players reward each other for being interesting players is a good thing

but i'm not wedded to the idea of throwing all that power to the GM

Exalted also has a strong suggestion that at the end of the session, players decide by consensus to award bonus XP to whomever was the most awesome on a variety of dimensions that session

i think what would be good is a way to get the whole table into the awarding, but it needs to be fluid enough to not screech a scene to a halt

I'm interested in finding compromises between "popularity contest" and "GM dictatorship."

mhm exactly that's the difficulty

something like the fate point economy is almost attractive

but i'm not a fan of the idea of penalizing the act of rewarding another player

via depleting your own pool of points

also because since the GM is immune to this penalty, it would probably tend back to the GM awarding

what about something like bidding in>

everybody starts with x points or something

if you want to reward something, toss a point in

the points only get passed on if above some threshold are put in

I'm also reminded of something I ran into regularly in 3.5, where you could get mechanical bonuses in social situations, like a +2 to your Diplomacy check, for role-playing the conversation really well.

and only points that are "awarded" count for anything, if you hoard them, the just disappear

alas, dinner

11:11 PM

But you couldn't get a +2 to your attack if you acted out the sword-swinging.

i'll be back in like twenty minutes

yeah that whole mess is a weird d&d-ism

The day I realised that my dumb-as-pants Charisma-dump minotaur who drained the life from everything he touched was a better diplomat than the bard because I'm better at social stuff than the bard's player was probably the day my love for D&D began to fester.

(And yes, I know it's a GM/group issue rather than one inbuilt to the system itself, but it's also endemic to the community. Moreover, I think it was the first time I realised --albeit subconsciously-- that D&D wasn't actually able to support the playstyles I desired)

11:36 PM

@Murch [wave]

back

Hey there :)

I mean D&D has a significant problem with the way it models social interaction.

@Grubermensch: Just don't model social interaction with rules. Play it, and do what's good for the story.

Just make it harder for people to achieve something through social engineering if their characters are not supposed to be good at it.

@Murch That's the D&D mentality, and it's really, really bad if you want to do a lot of social things.

11:39 PM

@Murch Unfortunately, that's the "If the GM can fix it, is it broken?" argument. Ignoring problematic rules doesn't make the the system itself any better, just the individual play experience.

Like D&D has no inbuilt way to model a negotiation. None. Nothing at all.

Well, I have never found a set of rules that really worked well for social interactions.

I mean, have you met many combat rules that really work well to approximate how actual combat works? My guess is not so much.

There isn't any one universal "best" system for anything, but D&D offers next to nothing.

It's all an approximation.

11:41 PM

Okay, I might have stepped into the mid of things here.

What I meant to say is, I have not found any set of rules that has improved the experience of solving social situations for me over just playing them.

Of course there still are worse and better tries at offering a framework

@Murch "Just playing" PvP social hasn't ever worked for me in practice.

"versus" used expansively there

@Murch The general topic is how to mechanically encourage narrating our actions (rather than just describing the mechanics we're using).

And I certainly didn't mean to suggest that rpg rules are supposed simulate real life. What fun would that be. ;)

@BESW Yes this is somewhat of a tangent from that, tbh.

@BESW Interesting

11:44 PM

Rolling back, I'm curious what your thoughts are @BESW on the suggestion I made before?

Unisystem, and Fate, and Dogs in the Vineyard, all have moderate success in the "social conflict modelling" arena because they use a generic conflict system for all kinds of conflict.

2

@Grubermensch The "bidding" thing?

@BESW yeah

I'd have to see it fleshed out a little, I don't think I totally understand it. But I have two problems with what I see: first, it looks like another "popularity contest" mechanic; second, it looks like it'd drag things out more than I'd want, unless it's an "end of session only" thing.

Dragging out is definitely a concern there. The popularity contest issue is tricky. In some sense this is supposed to be a popularity contest, almost like art criticism.

@Murch My experience has been that you either set up a scenario where someone(s) are in a position to dictate what "good narration" is and reward/punish others for conforming to that vision; or you take away the ability to replace action narrative with mechanical description by only providing mechanics insufficient to describe the action on their own.

That feels like a false dichotomy, though, so I'm hoping to find some middle ground for my own MLP game design.

11:49 PM

I don't know that there's any way to get around requiring the people at the table to decide that something is "good narration"

Without bundling Strong AI into the rulebook, and that seems like a poor choice.

@Grubermensch Even if there is rules for it, in the end it always comes down to the table, doesn't it?

(There's also the matter of how much I trust my players: if a game doesn't trust its players to make good group decisions, it dictates every little nuance of the game experience. If it does trust them, then it can easily give them too little to work with.)

@Murch For narration, not necessarily for in-game social interactions.

Jul 29 at 12:55, by BESW

(There's a difference between trusting one's players and throwing them to the wolves.)

@BESW I think trusting the players is a prerequisite to having a reward system like this.

11:51 PM

@Murch One point of contention in the RPG community is the extent to which a system's mechanics influence the experience at the table.

If you can't trust the players, you'll have to rely on only things that the rules can give you.

afk a bit

I think I might be too tired to properly partake in this discussion right now. – It's almost 2am here. ;)

Mm then I shall wait for @BESW to return.

Sorry, it sounds really interesting, but I feel like I am only throwing you back right now. ;)

11:55 PM

it's cool, i've been there

@Murch The 2am thing is valid, but it's often easy for this kind of conversation to get too theoretical and "begin with words and end with words." Keeping us grounded can be important.

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