TRPG General Chat

12:25 AM

@Magician Any tips on running DRYH?

1:50 AM

@BESW Can't think of anything specific. The system does a good job of amping up pressure as you go along. All you've got to do is match the growing PC die pools with your Pain pool, and come up with stuff that'd justify it. You're all but guaranteed to get to the utterly insane stuff.

BESW

Hmm.

PC motivations seem very important; the first time we tried DRYH, the motivations were interesting but not very specific, and I think that made the game lame.

Grubermensch

<- requests deacronymization

BESW

@Grubermensch dont-rest-your-head

Grubermensch

Oooh that wiki blurb sounds delicious.

Oblivious Sage

yes, that does sound intriguing

BESW

1:56 AM

Thank you.

Oblivious Sage

any chance it's free or pay-what-you-want?

BESW

No, $5 pdf.

Oblivious Sage

hmmm

how dark is it?

BESW

As dark as the group wants.

It's not gonna be light, but you can tune the talents and the setting.

Oblivious Sage

i like dark, one of the other DMs in my circle really likes dark, but the rest either don't like it or won't take it seriously

BESW

2:06 AM

For my group, we're throwing out the setting entirely.

The default Mad City is... well, their idea of "making things dreamlike" is basically "Piers Anthony does Alan Moore:" lots of awful literal puns in a grim, cynical Victorian/Edwardian setting.

Oblivious Sage

i don't think that would help our non-serious players take it seriously

BESW

For next week, we're going to be using the DRYH mechanics in our existing Fate campaign.

The party is going into space for the first time, and we'll have a single session of spaceship horror.

Oblivious Sage

that sounds interesting

could you let me know how it goes?

BESW

Everybody's got their own inner and outer demons, and DRYH will let us explore them physically.

Aye.

Magician

@BESW Ah, yes. I forgot about that, been a while. Yes, if characters basically just want to get back to their normal lives, it somewhat undermines the experience. I think it works best if PCs really want something in the "real" world, and have to use the mad powers to try and get it - and discover the connections.

Oblivious Sage

2:12 AM

the other DM that likes dark has been wanting to run something XCOM-like but hasn't picked a system

i'm still running the 5e starter set; hopefully the dragon (which they blundered into at level 3) will wipe them so we can move on to trying out fate

BESW

Originally I was going to run this session with Cthulhu Dark, but I think DRYH is better--I'm just nervous because I've only run one test session before and it didn't turn out great.

Oblivious Sage

what didn't go well? (keeping in mind i haven't read the rules)

BESW

We rushed character creation and didn't really understand how to make it work, I think.

The PCs had goals like "exceed the unrealistic expectations of my parents" and "earn enough to support my shopping addiction" and we had a hard time drilling down into the really crazy stuff.

Oblivious Sage

so they needed crazier goals?

Magician

One thing I noticed, the way players make mad talents and the way the book describes them differs significantly - in multiple gaming groups I've tried it. Mind you, they were all coming off D&D at the time. So players would make up mad talents that worked as a power, effectively. Whereas DRYH thinks it's a tool to take narrative control of the scene.

@BESW Yeah, that won't exactly drive the plot in a one-off.

BESW

2:21 AM

Three of my group have come up with Madness talents already: Agent Baker takes on the appearance and thoughts of people around him; Stellata can grow and control plants; Myka can shatter herself along alternate timelines.

Myka's so far the only one who has a real goal, and it's a doozy: she wants to rescue the party member who's lost in space and time.

(We talked about it a bit at the end of last session, and some folks had more ideas immediately than others.)

Our setting is a spaceship, so instead of a Mad City I'm going to have the spaceship change its nature and become increasingly bizarre and implausible. And there's some good sources for NPC obstacles/threats, but the plot really needs to come from the PCs.

On the plus side (I think) some of the players are looking forward to player-vs-player conflicts.

And a couple of PC goal ideas look promising to create conflict.

I am having trouble fitting one PC in, but that's... not a DRYH thing, I think.

doppelgreener

@BESW I didn't even think of Stellata needing to have a goal up there. 8)

Should she have one?

(i mean, when she starts going mad she'll have one)

BESW

Usually "What's keeping you awake" implies a goal.

But "What's your path?" is a more explicit prompt for this sort of thing.

However, I've got some stuff in mind that should provide immediate impetus for folks without goals.

That's actually one of the challenges I'm facing: integrating Doctor Light into the adventure seems like a great way to force conflict, but I'm having trouble with the specifics.

doppelgreener

2:52 AM

@BESW I'm not sure about this part for her yet.

BESW

@doppelgreener Well, I'm going to be giving some environmental Weirdness for people to latch onto if they don't have anything internal.

doppelgreener

Actually, [dives into Fate chat]

BESW

Strange sounds, fleeting glimpses, weird temperature changes, the typical haunted house stuff that's plenty justification for not sleeping.

Shalvenay

4:23 AM

@BESW I dunno...you could make things mighty hard if you made all the wiring in a house hum like a high-tension line

Nyoze

4:37 AM

@Shalvenay I'd still sleep through that :(

BESW

5:53 AM

@Shalvenay Actually, I'm gonna have the spaceship spoiler.

BESW

6:49 AM

You think you're a fan of conlangs until your best friend sends you a postcard written in Tengwar.

Tweeted by KyleKallgren on October 5, 2015 at 6:46 AM

SPArchaeologist

7:04 AM

Morning

Nyoze

Morning :)

eimyr

8:29 AM

Morning!

Nyoze

Morning! :)

SPArchaeologist

I fear the day someone will reply "Good Morning!"

Nyoze

Oh no, fear the forces of good! /panic

eimyr

SPArchaeologist

nope, my fear comes from him

Nyoze

8:36 AM

I hope that your existence to this point in the morning, and your continued experience afterwards was, is, and continues to be thoroughly enjoyable to yourself and to those whom have the pleasure of coming into contact with you.

IE - I'm being completely selfish and hoping that if you have a good morning, it spreads back to me :)

SPArchaeologist

@Nyoze I love to see you smile, and it makes me feel alive.

Nyoze

When I used to work in a library, I'd draw smiley faces on the boxes and then hide to watch other people smile when they saw them :) I'm a happiness leech :D

SPArchaeologist

Let me update my chart then...

Laughter: Nyoze
Kindnes: Pixie/Trogdor

Honesty: BESW?

eimyr

BESW is Generosity to me.

Countless hours on chat explaining minutia instead of saying "google it"

Sandwich

What am I then

Nyoze

8:51 AM

@Sandwich Lunch :P

SPArchaeologist

@Sandwich We already established that you are a Polka player, remember :P ?

Sandwich

Ah yes, the Element of Lunch, the most important element of all

5

Nyoze

/trumped, gives up.

Sandwich

If I had to dub myself an element it'd probably be honesty

I'm honest to the point where even if its a negative thing I'll let you know

eimyr

Are you being honest now?

Sandwich

8:55 AM

Yes

Nyoze

Eimyr - The voice of skepticism.

SPArchaeologist

@eimyr That is not the point. There is something more important. @Sandwich, could you please try and speak with a country folk accent?

Sandwich

Y'all got some real fine taste in accents for sure.

SPArchaeologist

@Sandwich ok, you passed the test :P

Sandwich

I'd hope so

eimyr

9:00 AM

@SPArchaeologist How would Sandwich fail your test?

BESW

Brawdly speakin', thar's two kahnds uhv Suthurn acksense, an' yew've gawtta find thuh one what werks fer yew.

Sandwich

@Eimyr By speaking and enunciating clearly I would assume, sugar.

BESW

Thuh drawl's awl stretched out, laik.

Nyoze

Have fun with your accents, I'm out of here :P

Cya tomorrow.

eimyr

@BESW It was supposed to be a "country folk accent". I' dehpends lotta where yo come frum, love.

BESW

9:01 AM

An' th' gabble's smusht up an' pusht t'gether, y'know?

SPArchaeologist

Yer all know this one will be bookmarked, right :P?

Sandwich

It's just a matter of puttin' y'all's apostrophe's in the right places and such.

eimyr

You see, I come from Poland. It's a place where language is a sort of Battle Royale for the mind - incredibly difficult and complex, especially the speaking bit. And to put that into perspective, while we are all able to speak literary language, there are areas of the country where you have no idea what is being said unless you come from there.

Idea of drawls and smusht up gabbles seems very unfamiliar. If you are a redneck living in the middle of nowhere, you use different words for everything.

BESW

@eimyr I moved from an English-speaking American territory dominated (linguistically) by a combination of Filipino and Midwestern influences, to a college in South Carolina. "Yuffixxintugowt" and "Ah gawt awl mah ah supplahs at Mahkel's" were side-by-side, and folks thought I was British--or couldn't understand me at all.

Sandwich

9:18 AM

I live in Georgia so I'm used to the Southern drawl

Though I don't speak it myself

SPArchaeologist

11:32 AM

^_^ Just read a nice notice. It's official, Twilight on the cover of the IDW FiM issue 33 was indeed supposed to be Lestat. Yay.

Sandwich

I dont know who Lestat is

SPArchaeologist

Lestat de Lioncourt

Lestat de Lioncourt is a fictional character appearing in several novels by Anne Rice, including The Vampire Lestat. He is a vampire who was the narrator and an antihero in the majority of The Vampire Chronicles. == Publication history == The Vampire Lestat (the second book in The Vampire Chronicles series) is presented as Lestat's autobiography and it follows his exploits from his youth in the Auvergne region of France to his early years as a vampire fledgling. Many of the other books in the series also follow his story, such as The Queen of the Damned, The Tale of the Body Thief, Memnoch the...

Also, kudos to them for completely avoiding to reference the Twilight Saga vampires -_-

BESW

11:56 AM

I've been re-reading the Twilight series, and my goodness but the second book is stuffed with biting social commentary--especially given that the author doesn't actually know she's making it.

SPArchaeologist

I don't know if this should be taken as a compliment or a critic.

BESW

....I don't think it's really either. More of a fascinated observation.

I've spoken before about how the Twilight franchise is this close to being a really smart psychological thriller with intelligent social commentary.

Sandwich

I've not read it because I don't like the source material

BESW

It's just not self-aware enough to realise that it's shooting for entirely the wrong genre.

Sandwich

It takes real talent to take vampires and turn them into... that.

eimyr

12:04 PM

@BESW You make it sound as if you gave a typewriter to a group of monkeys and they produced something close to a publishable book.

BESW

@Sandwich The idea of "real" vampires is laughable to me. Twilight vampires are, thematically and in terms of ability, closer to a lot of the 19th-century vampire stories than anything the modern era has come to associate with the monster.

Sandwich

So you think Twilight is better than Nosferatu?..

BESW

...what.

Are you somehow associating "more like the first decades of the genre" with "better"?

Sandwich

I've just never heard someone actually praise twilight, except for being bad

BESW

I'm simply saying that I think "Twilight vampires aren't real vampires" is both silly (so what if they're different? new versions of old themes are totally fine) and demonstrably untrue.

And if you haven't read Twilight, can you really say with confidence that it's changed?

SPArchaeologist

12:09 PM

the problem isn't the sparkling vampire, the problem is the Flash Sentry syndrome, also know as "school campus stereotypical flat love interests put there because they think girls will like it". I was surprised there wasn't a rock boy band somewhere.

Sandwich

I can judge that based on the Movie adaptation that they typically align important facts and put them to cinema, that they don't have anything in common with nosferatu aside from drinking blood

BESW

Dracula doesn't burst into sun in the Bram Stoker novel; his powers are simply diminished. Similarly Twilight vampires can't go into the sun not because it hurts them, but because it exposes their true nature making them vulnerable to human retaliation. His charisma is explicitly a supernatural power, just as Twilight vampires' sexual attractiveness is explicitly a supernatural predatory feature.

Sandwich

They aren't intimidating at all

SPArchaeologist

@Sandwich actually, they aren't supposed to

BESW

The original Nosferatu film is itself a reactionary rebuttal to the Bela Lugosi-style Dracula, proclaiming that the seminal film (which is more influential than the novel it's based on, in terms of popular culture concepts of vampires) drifted too far from its source material.

And no, Twilight vampires aren't supposed to intimidate humans: they're alluring, seductive predators who lure their prey rather than hunt it.

And the primary family of vampires we see for most of the Twilight stories are actively trying to shed even that kind of terror.

The themes for Edward and his family, aren't about predation on the innocent, but the attempt to become and remain innocent in the face of overwhelming temptation.

In that sense, they're a more successful iteration of common Anne Rice themes.

So before I take seriously accusations that Twilight vampires deviate too far from the vampire mould, some definitions will have to get drawn up. Anne Rice vampires are sympathetic and pathetic rather than purely monstrous; is that too far a deviation? Because if so, then we're rejecting Barney the Vampire a hundred years prior.

Instead there are quite good reasons to mock Twilight without inventing unnecessary restrictions on an extremely broad genre.

Sandwich

12:18 PM

I think Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's Dracula are the source material for Vampires

Nosferatu Preceded Anne rice by 20 years

BESW

@Sandwich Then we're going to ignore the nearly 80 years of English-language vampire craze before Dracula?

Sandwich

And Bram stoker by about 80 years

Aaron

Hi

BESW

Because if you're saying that historical precedence is what makes vampires more "vampirey," we should be talking about Carmilla and Lord Ruthven and Barney.

(All of whom are much more like Edward than they are like Nosferatu.)

Sandwich

What was the name of that guy who killed virgins and actually drank their blood in real life because of some disease he had

BESW

12:22 PM

Mister Historically Unconfirmed Myth Based On A Dramatised Misunderstanding Of Medicine?

Vampires don't have a neat, tidy origin.

Dracula's powers draw more from folklore about werewolves than the existing vampire fiction.

Sandwich

Porphyria

Pretty sure that's it

SPArchaeologist

@Sandwich Aren't you mixing up Vlad and Elizabeth Báthory?

Sandwich

I might

My knowledge of history is rather lax

SPArchaeologist

@Sandwich Haemophilia

Sandwich

Hah thats ironic

In Oblivion the Vampire disease is called Porphyric Hemophilia

BESW

12:25 PM

You're shifting the goalposts.

Magician

Ah, the recurring vampire argument. We have the strangest traditions.

SPArchaeologist

@Sandwich That was the reason they called that way. Since it caused internal bleeding, often people with that syndrome have blood in their eye and mouth.

Magician

Classic D&D module cover. Slight content warning for language, I guess.

Sandwich

Lol

BESW

@Magician yeah, but this time it's more like the vampire changing the subject.

Magician

12:29 PM

@BESW Do it right. Vampire: The Subject Changing.

eimyr

@Magician Vampire: the Digression

BESW

@eimyr No, no. It's Vampire: The Digressioning.

The memetic formula is Noun: The Gerund.

eimyr

@BESW Why verbing? No Vampire corebooks followed this template.

SPArchaeologist

@BESW Shouldn't that be "the subject is more like 'the vampire changes' "?

Aaron

Hey @BESW I am building a module. Would you mind taking a look at the notes I have and giving me an opinion on what you think of the basic story? I tried to leave it mostly open so players have flexibility in what they can do to avoid making it feel railroady.

eimyr

12:32 PM

Vampire: Masquerade, Vampire: Requiem, then Dark Ages, Victorian etc.

BESW

@eimyr No, but memes aren't interested in that kind of consistency.

eimyr

@BESW Are we interested in memes here?

BESW

We sometimes discuss them. And there are a few memes specific to this chat.

Sandwich

Such as?

BESW

But random regurgitation of formula for its own sake isn't usually indulged in.

SPArchaeologist

12:37 PM

Actually, right now I am more interested in hearing what BESW thinks the greater problems of Twilight are.

BESW

Owlbears and owlephants; @Magician steals mornings; if the star bar is ever completely filled with BESW's messages it's a sign of the apocalypse; the collective noun for moderators...

@SPArchaeologist I guess we should take it to the NAB.

Joshua Aslan Smith

1:25 PM

@waxeagle lol prestige classes PRESTIGE CLASSSES

media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/…

wax eagle

why?...just why?

Joshua Aslan Smith

Its like watching Rome sacked by the Visigoths

I can see it now, the Prestige Class book called "InsertWizardName's Tome of Heroes"

to me the best part that its basically for spellcasters

I could see prestige classes having some room for usefulness if they focues on making martial/non-casters have exemplar abilities/some kind of breadth of utility but probably won't go that way

Miniman

@JoshuaAslanSmith That is weird. Just really weird.

wax eagle

I also never love class/character advancement bits being heavily dependent on quest items either

Miniman

> Like the concept. Don't like that Rune magic chops off Higher Level spells in return for it's features. This was an issue in 3rd edition. Something that is supposed to enhance magic shouldn't reduce the ability to cast high level spells.

People amaze me sometimes.

Joshua Aslan Smith

1:39 PM

@waxeagle always feels 1 of 2 ways (I feel this way about artifact items too) either 1) It is only given out at the noblise oblige of the DM, you can never ask it is at his whim... OR 2)players petition for it and the whole story has to bend over backward to supply the means.

Miniman

No, spellcasters should never have to make sacrifices to increase their abilities. They should just become more powerful without having to give anything up.

lisardggY

2:09 PM

@Miniman The problem here isn't with the trade-off, I think, but the fact that high-level spells are so powerful that the trade-off isn't well balanced. At least on paper.

BESW

3:36 PM

The reason for ARRPG's Brainstorming mechanic, in one comic panel:

eimyr

@BESW Sooo... reason not found?

The Oracle

4:39 PM

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Q: Is the poster the final arbitor of the content of their posts?

I posted a question. The question was answered, and the question is not in question. The title contained something, which is a tag, that was "organic to the conversational nature of the post". It was edited out. I reverted it back. The person to edit this out has since LOCKED the post so the...

Pixie

6:31 PM

I always miss the vampire conversations somehow...

BESW

9:40 PM

@lisardggY Undertale is an interesting response to the murderhobo paradigm in video games.

> We love stories about heroes because we love to see ourselves as the heroes of our own story; more often than not we define heroism not by how we rise to meet difficult circumstances, but by how many villains we destroy.
And so we create villains—pinatas, rather than people—who are so de facto evil that they deserve no empathy, and we create systems and stories that give us seemingly no choice but to strike them down.

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