TRPG General Chat - 2016-03-06 (page 1 of 2)

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12:48 AM

Hmm, seems spoiler blocks aren't quite obvious enough, as I just got spoiled on Hoard of the Dragon Queen.

2 hours later…

3:10 AM

**Cool RPG stuff:** [Bundle of Holding](http://bundleofholding.com "buy RPGs cheap in bulk, support charities & indie designers!");
[Deep Dark Blue](http://drivethrurpg.com/product/175636/Deep-Dark-Blue--A-World-of-Adventure-for-Fate-Core "A World of Adventure for Fate Core awaits between the devil and the deep blue sea…");
[Storium launch](https://storium.com/ "Still no native library of storycard art, though.");
[Conan RPG](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/modiphius/robert-e-howards-conan-roleplaying-game "'the most authentic Conan roleplaying experience yet'");

4 hours later…

7:30 AM

Today in Subtitles Gone Wrong, "enchiladas mole" becomes "enchiladas melee."

3 hours later…

10:38 AM

@Anaphory unfortunately not everything is a trope. Maybe you should create your own Trope page, describing this kind of Fake Firepower Superiority in detail?

2 hours later…

12:19 PM

what up

Not much; the chat goes pretty quiet on the weekends.

but that's when the RPG games are!

I'm pretty excited, we're having a game soon today

Cool.

are you familiar with the 40k universe?

Only passingly.

12:27 PM

Oohh

and with Dune?

Moreso.

I'm mixing those two!

as a GM, that is

the good thing is my players don't know about Dune

and I just recently started reading the first novel

so I'm using a lot of elements from it, which are top quality

but my players are none the wiser

Interesting.

feels like cheating, but if the game's good...

I've always drawn heavily on various inspirations.

One of my PCs in our current game is lifted directly from Skin Horse. She fits our world very well.

12:32 PM

what system?

Fate; specifically atomic-robo, but with our own custom setting.

never heard of fate

what's your setting?

if you don't mind

It started as a modern-day mashup of all the series where Weird Stuff exists but the average person is unaware: Atomic Robo, Hellboy, X-Files, Warehouse 13, and the like.

whoa nice

But recent events in the campaign have brought all the Weird Stuff out into the open.

12:36 PM

hah, reminds me of the first SMT

err, Shin Megami Tensei

We aren't exactly post-apocalyptic, though it came close.

A four thousand year old Atlantean spaceship was falling into the sun and causing massive solar flares that threatened to wipe out most of humanity's electronic infrastructure.

you got space in your otherwise earthly campaign?

that sounds like a lot of fun

While our PCs were saving the spaceship, back on earth all the Weird Stuff surfaced, some to take advantage of the chaos and some to help prevent the chaos.

like, when the party is used to a certain environment, but then you send them to a radically different one

oooh, were they surprised to come back to all the shit hitting the fan?

Yeah, it was fun. Our first adventure was getting all the stuff we needed to go into space, and our second was dealing with Weirdness before we launched.

We just wrapped up our third adventure, on the spaceship, and next week we'll be back on earth.

12:40 PM

with adventure you mean game sessions or small campaigns?

Small campaigns, a few months of play each.

The PCs were kinda surprised to hear just how Weird things were getting, but the players have been part of the campaign design all along.

nice

I always found that changing the world in a RPG is very interesting

and having the players affect it

in some games players are just part of the setting and nothing major changes

My group doesn't draw strong lines between GM and player roles; we've got three people who semi-regularly GM this one campaign, and Fate is designed to give players agency in the game to define things and make major changes.

u wot?

it doesn't have a fixed GM?

I'm the "primary" GM, but anybody who has an idea they want to run can step up.

We're a group of friends who plays RPGs, not a GM who runs players through his games.

12:44 PM

that's weird, I mean, if somene's both player and GM, he knows what's going to happen

or how... you said the system is made for that

Mmm. Fate works best when the GM doesn't have a specific resolution in mind--or even a fully realised idea of what's going on.

For example:

In our very first session, the party went to go meet a physicist. As the GM, I decided that when they arrived he'd be mysteriously missing.

The PCs investigated, and when someone rolled Notice or Contacts to discover a clue, that PC's player told us what the clue was.

When we had enough clues, the players rolled to see who'd get to put them all together and tell us what had happened to the physicist.

Everybody gets to be part of creating the story and gets to be surprised by it too.

ah, so it relies in RP a lot

My players have at least as good of ideas as I do, often better.

rather than tests and combat

aah, wait

they kinda... invent the story as they go?

Yup.

12:48 PM

whoa

that's like a comic jam in a sense

Last night @doppelgreener GMed our last session on the spaceship, and he expected there to be an epic battle between the PCs and a giant castle robot.

Instead we negotiated with the person in charge of the robot and helped resurrect her dead sister in exchange for releasing our friend she was holding prisoner.

aint diplomacy awesome?

We've probably drastically altered the political climate of the factions on the spaceship in unforeseen ways; no doubt we'll revisit that in a future adventure.

but how do you know how much can someone deviate the story?

or is there no limit?

There's in-game currency that you spend to solve problems, and earn when things get more complicated or dramatic. That helps standardise things a lot.

But of course the final arbiter is the group.

12:52 PM

you're going to need good and experienced players

It's about collaborative storytelling, so if somebody has a major change they run it past the group first.

I wouldn't see myself and my friends playing this when we were still green

Experience isn't really necessary; just an open, comfortable atmosphere.

Often the newer players are better at this, because they don't have pre-set ideas about roles and power dynamics in an RPG.

Two of my players had a very bad experience in other groups because there was a lot of table-level competition between players, for items and plot control and so forth.

lol

dem powergamers

But our group is able to have players collaborate over how their PCs will compete.

It's not about powergaming.

12:56 PM

have you ever played with people you didn't know previously?

Yup.

I'm not sure if I could

I've always played with a close friend group

It's harder, I try to take time in the first session to establish some group cohesion.

There's a few answers on the site about how to craft a constructive atmosphere.

don't you feel shyness?

Not shyness per se, but nervous anticipation, certainly. Those kinds of feelings are quite natural.

12:58 PM

delicious social anxiety

I mean you have to like RPG a lot

to me spending time with my friends is half the fun

I'm not sure if I would enjoy it as much, or at all, if I played with strangers

Indeed. I started running games because it was a way to control the environment in which I was spending time with my friends, because they often liked to hang out with other folks who enjoyed things I didn't want to be part of.

But I've had several situations where up to half the group were folks I'd only just met that day, or that hour.

There's a lot variables; if it's just a one-shot and then it's over, there's a lot less pressure to get to know the folks really well.

you're going to need a lot of Charisma to control an entire group of part strangers

If someone's joining an existing group, I often suggest they sit and observe for the first session.

If the folks are there to game, I can expect them to help make that happen. I don't need to control anyone; the GM is a storytelling role, it doesn't automatically grant social privilege or responsibility.

yeah you're right

you know? about sitting and observe

I find that eating together beforehand is a great way to create and maintain social cohesion for any group.

1:04 PM

one of my players can't play if someone's watching

which he doesn't mind if said person is playing

37

Q: How to transform a bunch of strangers into a friendly group?

I am about to start a game with a bunch of strangers. I posted a flyer in a friendly local game shop (FLGS) and some folks responded enthusiastically. I talked a little bit to them about what sort of characters they would like to play and we're starting soon. We know what we want to play and what...

new-players social group-dynamics

that's a good one

well, it's social skills 101

And this answer talks about my group's evolution from one GM (me) leading players through pre-made stories, into what we are today.

This question is about creating more traditional dungeon adventures without turning them into railroads.

There's no magic formula for any of this. I have some general principles and a few tools, but every time I do it is new and different because it's new people and I have to adapt to them.

I'm lucky because I have some training and experience with group dynamics and creating coherent, supportive environments in other areas.

A big part of it is just making sure folks always feel like they can make suggestions, or speak up if they don't like something, and they'll be taken seriously.

If they don't feel like they'll be taken seriously, they tend to act out.

And that kind of open communication helps clear up all sorts of misunderstandings about the kind of game people think they're playing.

do you find fun in those settings?

I mean does the effort pay the price?

I'd rather play with the same people every time, just as I've done so far

Absolutely.

For the most part I have a pretty coherent, unchanging core group of players right now.

But being open to folks bringing their friends is a major part of what makes our group work.

If I insisted on only having participants who could come every week for sure, I wouldn't have a game. Instead we've got a larger pool of casual attendees who come as they're able, and we've chosen systems and stories which support that style.

1:15 PM

you have to really like RPGs to put that effort

Nah. I really like doing stuff with my friends, and "stuff" is usually RPGs.

For me, it's all about providing a space where my friends are comfortable.

RPGs happen to be a common interest amongst most of my friends, so we do that. Stripping RPGs of the GM/player power dynamic not only makes it more comfortable, it also takes the pressure off any one person to fill a particular role ALL the time, and gives the whole experience a lot more variety and flavour.

I don't know, having a structured traditional game is easier for me

everyone knows what's expected of them

That's fair. Every group has its own dynamic.

bear in mind we're not RPG veterans

I know when I first started, I relied heavily on the perceived social authority of the GM to accomplish my goal of controlling the social atmosphere.

1:19 PM

what we strive to improve is the flow of the game, that is, knowing the rules to prevent stalling, improving RP quality, etc

our objective is to play almost in "real time" with no unnecesary pauses and without cringy RP

I mean RP is the hardest thing in RPG, to me

Those are useful skills to hone.

it's what prevents me from playing with strangers, the almighty RP cringe

You may want to try out a few different systems to see if something else is better at supporting those goals than what you've got now.

we have!

My group has a half-dozen systems it uses depending on what kind of experience we want for a particular night/story.

1:22 PM

we've played... let me think

And we've got more we've tried, and more we want to try.

DnD, Pathfinder, Rogue Trader, Shadowrun and paranoia

and All Flesh Must be Eaten

and now we're playing a homebrew campaign with Shadowrun

Those are all pretty mechanics-heavy for a goal of near-real-time play. Except maybe AFMBE, that's relatively lighter.

that is, homebrew items, and stuff

AFMBE... we were such noobs when we played it, we didn't make a good use of it

I honestly love Shadowrun

I would use it every time

Yeah, Fate's our go-to system for long-form games.

1:26 PM

how do you resolve tests there?

Fate uses rolls of 4dF (Fudge dice are six sided, with two plusses, two minuses, and two blanks, giving a very nice bell curve between -4 and +4), modified by a character's skill rank, and then further modified by spending game currency as desired to re-roll or give +2s--but each currency spent needs to have a different relevant narrative element that it invokes.

Rolls are opposed by flat difficulties or by other rolls, as appropriate.

hmmm similar to SR's dice pool system

For situations where one roll isn't dramatic enough to resolve things, there are several different kinds of structures for multiple rolls.

you got... Fate... points? (heh)

Yup.

Outcomes are measured by failure (less than the target), tie (meets the target), success (exceeds the target), and success with style (exceeds the target by 3 or more).

You can also negotiate to, for example, succeed at cost even if you failed the roll.

Last night my hippogriff failed spectacularly at sneaking through a thorny jungle, so I negotiated to succeed at the cost of having Torn-up wings limiting my flight for most of the session.

1:34 PM

ooh

you negotiate with the players or with the assigned GM?

It's pretty much the same thing.

I suggest the cost, and if anybody thinks it's unreasonable, or not costly enough, or has an idea they'd like to suggest, they chip in.

it sounds like a lot of opportunities for conflict

> In many places throughout this book, the phrase “the GM decides” is often used interchangeably with “the group decides” regarding some of these issues, because it emphatically isn’t the GM’s job to run a dictatorship—every player should always be allowed the chance to have a say in those instances. The GM should act as more of a moderator, synthesizing the group’s input with her own in order to reach a final decision.

Fate works on the assumption that everyone's there to have fun, and that "fun" includes having dramatic and complicated things happen to make your PC's goals hard to attain.

In "traditional" gaming, the GM creates obstacles and the players overcome them.

In the playstyle Fate assumes, GMs and players work together to create exciting stories about dramatic, competent, and proactive PCs who face daunting obstacles and overcome them.

Fate helps encourage this through the fate point economy.

When things happen to make your PC's life more dramatic or complicated, you get fate points which you can later spend to solve problems your PC faces.

This rewards players for seeking out story complications, and enforces a narrative cycle of crisis and victory.

Almost immediately after my hippogriff got her Torn-up wings, she needed to carry another PC to the top of a heavily guarded castle. Because of her injured wings, I took a fate point to be unable to even try doing it sneakily or quickly.

I had to be slow and obvious about it, with logically dangerous and dramatic results.

If I'd wanted to be sneaky and quick, I could've instead spent a fate point to say that my wings weren't going to give me that much trouble right now.

Mechanising this sort of decision with fate points significantly reduces the time spent negotiating things which in, say, a free-form game, might take half an hour to resolve.

Instead it was about 30 seconds, tops.

2:08 PM

sorry I had lunch

6 hours later…

8:09 PM

You know. I am really eager for the simulationist style games to come back into favor, though. Fate is already great for narrativist types and D&D is great for gamists, but I feel like it's been some time since I saw any advancement in the simulation front.

Maybe I am just not well informed.

But I don't know of any mainstream success on that front.

The OSR is alive and well.

The OSR isn't really a game, though.

It is a collective.

Like the Borg.

Do you know of any OSR game that achieved mainstream success lately?

I seem to recall hearing of a few, but I don't pay much attention to that corner of gaming.

It is a much forgotten corner...

I'm not really sure what you mean by simulationist, though. The GNS theory describes player approaches rather than systems, and is no longer considered particularly useful even for that.

8:19 PM

Isn't Big Model an update to GNS?

That is reasonably well regarded, right?

Yes, but it's not commonly used.

To that point, none of the major academic theories are commonly used, though.

Aye.

Usually "simulationism" is synonymous with "realism" in common dialogue.

But I'd consider Katanas & Trenchcoats to be a recent simulationist game in the Big Model sense.

I think I've been digging too deep and delving too far onto those theories.

They ingrained the terminology in my head.

Yeah... structures like the Big Model are kinda like literary genres: they're best used to describe the sorts of people who'd like a thing, rather than the thing itself.

And even then, in practice there's a LOT more wiggle room than the construct admits to on paper.

8:24 PM

But in my experience at least, you can feel the forces pushing against you.

The intent of the designer.

In some games more than others.

You can totally play Fate in a "gamist" sense.

Check out K&T.

In a way they would enjoy.

But you'd feel the tug towards the intended playstyle.

Trying to.

Drive Tru RPG doesn't want to accept my payment for some reason.

Aw.

8:25 PM

Has anyone played Strike! ?

I have not.

The game system, that is.

Is the ? part of the name as well?

No.

I should have put "Strike!" in quotes

But I didn't.

Because that sounds like a great military warfare game.

8:26 PM

And thus sowed confusion.

"Strike![Question Mark?]"

Hadn't heard about it. [reads]

You'd have to decide when to rally your forces, when to retreat, etc.

Apparently it's tactical combat that can be used with most settings.

On another note, I ordered a 3D printer on Friday.

So I'm gonna print so much terrain.

Wow.

Awesome.

I always wanted one of those.

You can print miniatures as well.

If you know how to do it right.

Which one did you get?

8:29 PM

Yeah, once I get it all calibrated, I'm gonna print some stuff.

I got one called the CTC Duplicator. It's a Chinese model based on the Replicator Dual.

A friend of mine who was already into 3D printing got one and really likes it.

So I ended up ordering one.

$400, not bad.

Tax return funded it, so that was nice.

The price of a game console.

It was like a government sponsored savings plan.

Or half a VR headset.

Yeah, but I already have a PS4

And the only thing I want an XBOne for is the Dance Central games.

Good morning.

8:31 PM

And that's not worth it alone.

I honestly think it was a worthier purchase. I've not used my PS4 in ages.

My girlfriend and I use it mostly for Netflix right now.

Back when I used gridded combat, Gnome Stew Print and Fold Minis were awesome.

I'll use it more when Uncharted 4 comes out.

Same here.

Or Persona 5.

8:32 PM

I launched Destiny for the first time in forever. But my PS+ subscription had lapsed

So it was kinda boring.

I have the deepest loathing for Destiny.

It is one of the things that I just cannot forgive.

I liked it. I got my money's worth, for sure.

My new hotness, come Tuesday, is gonna be The Division though.

Getting that for the PC. Played the beta. Loved it.

You know, if I had your money to spare, and lived somewhere more sensible, I don't know what I would choose, a VR Headset or a 3D printer.

I have a fairly nice ship for Star Citizen, so that would be great too.

But printing...

....oh. Oh. I'm sure they meant well, but that "Don't demand nonsense" admonishment on page 3 is really not making me confident in the designers.

That is just useful.

@BESW, you are referring to...?

8:36 PM

@Althis I was glancing at the free Strike! rules.

If I was gonna use paper folded miniatures, I'd def use the ones Rich made for the OOTS kickstarter.

BTW, @Althis, 13th Age contains some interesting Simulation-forward elements.

I've ordered my 13th age book the last time I've been around here, @BESW.

Like, 6-8 months ago?

And it still hasn't arived.

Wow, that's worse than Guam shipping.

I think my postal service must have lost it.

8:41 PM

Particularly notable is a mechanic to semi-randomly determine which major NPCs will be significant to a particular scene or session.

I though about asking for a replacement, but the bureaucracy is just daunting.

9:03 PM

Hey.

Do you guys consider Dungeon World to be OSR?

I don't

9:30 PM

hey folks

Hey

Hey

OSR?

Old School Renaissance

old D&D edition retroclones and hacks

If I remember correctly

9:52 PM

Then no @Althis Dungeon World is definitely not OSR

It's based on the Apocalypse World Engine system

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