Surface area of the USA is 9.857 million km², we'll say it's 10 million. There's a million m² in a km² so it's 10 million million m². You can fit about five 40cm pizzas into a square metre, eight if you cut them up. So, the USA is as big as 50-80 million million pizzas, depending on how much you want to cut them up to get all the gaps filled in.
(Don't try this at home. Your neighbourhood will be very annoyed by the ant problem and you'll never live that down, and you may exhaust significant portions of the food supply.)
@trogdor turns out I was off by a factor of a thousand. Those were must have been very large pizzas in my initial estimate.
So, roughly inspired by yesterday's conversation, I made an entry for the 200-Word RPG Challenge. But I'm concerned it's too similar to Lasers & Feelings to share under the contest's CC-BY 4.0 license (L&F is shared under CC-BY-NC-SA 3.0).
I was using CSS. :P At the time I was fighting with a number of things, though, and I might have just had some wires crossed somewhere. I think everything else is working as it should at this point.
Well, except some select styling wonkiness. I might have to bring some JavaScript in if I can figure it out.
@doppelgreener Clunky, but decent. I'm just not used to it yet, I think.
[pokes export with a stick]
So... many... options...
@doppelgreener When I sat down to write this, I just put each mechanic idea I came up with on a separate card in a scratch folder. Then I dragged the ones I wanted into a draft folder to see what they look like together. I could switch out one mechanic without disrupting anything else, and re-arrange them however I liked.
Resolving a tension paragraph: _ "the difference that matters to you" should be "the DIFFERENCE chosen above" or "the DIFFERENCE chosen at the start". It made me pause and think "Wait, are there more differences? Is this about whether the current tension matters to me? .... oh, wait, it's the one and only difference that exists, that one up there." - You roll 1-3d6. I thought this was an "add them together" mechanic, the only thing that clued me in that it was an "any roll under" or "any roll over" system was the last line about "more successes", and I could only piece that together because…
This paragraph:
> Whenever you succeed on a FOREIGN roll, take another coin. You can choose to lose 1 coin (minimum 2) by trying to obstruct another character’s FOREIGN interactions.
Cool mechanic. It's ambiguous whether I can pay a coin to obstruct (and make them fail?) or if I voluntarily obstruct somehow (there's no opposed roll described) and can opt to lose a coin in the process.
Recently, a user posted a question asking for a specific user's house rules. This question was promptly closed as off-topic, and I feel like the community made the right decision, but I can't put my finger on why.
Looking at our What topics can I ask about here page, the question seems to fall s...
@doppelgreener Thanks. Please note that if you get in the way of someone else's FOREIGN interactions, and you're that person's FRIEND or NOT-FRIEND, you've actually given them an extra die to roll.
The fact success at foreign interactions requires coins, and the fact that succeeding at them gives you more coins, and the fact that the maximum number of coins means you give up, is wonderful.
@BESW Oh! So dice rolling works like this then: I roll 1d6, +1d6 if the DIFFERENCE is relevant, +1d6 if my FRIEND or NOT-FRIEND chooses to get involved. (If they choose to get involved, and interfere, they may choose to lose 1 coin.)
I thought the "they get involved" was my choice, and unrelated to the interfering thing.
Or alternate wording: "Roll 1d6. Add another 1d6 if the DIFFERENCE is relevant. Your FRIEND or NOT-FRIEND can choose to get involved: if so, add another 1d6. If they are interfering, they may choose to lose 1 coin."
(It's not clear how "you get another dice" becomes "they interfere". I can understand "they get involved", but what makes it an interference?)
@Adeptus Yes. And you become "more LOCAL" by getting in the way of others' attempts to have FOREIGN interactions, but in the process you're likely to push them closer to the FOREIGNers.
So if you roll the LOCAL way, your coin-count stays as is, regardless of pass/fail, help/interfere. If you roll the FOREIGN way & succeed, you gain a coin. If you interfere with someone's FOREIGN roll, you lose a coin.
From the crime blotter: "Seems worth mentioning this guy was arrested in a suburb of Perth called Wanneroo, which is north of Marangaroo and Koondoola, east of Mullaloo and Kallaroo, and on the shores of Lake Joondalup in Yellagonga Park. It seems like a fun place to live. If you ever got depressed you could just go around saying the names of things."
@doppelgreener I'll admit, as GM I'm not always completely sure what ruleset one of my players is using, but I'm pretty clear on which one I'm using =)
You mentioned the Adventurer's Guild Cafe the other day, which link I sent to a buddy of mine who's often daydreamed about opening up a gaming-space. Tonight we decided we may take a road trip out there some time this summer. If we do, I'll let you know.
> To resolve a tense interaction, roll 1d6; +1d6 if the DIFFERENCE is relevant; +1d6 if your FRIEND or NOT-FRIEND chooses to get involved. Count these dice as SUCCESSES: - Interacting with LOCAL things (your customs, technology, geography): count dice showing OVER your number of coins. - Interacting with FOREIGN things (their customs, technology, bureaucracy): count dice showing UNDER your number of coins. Any SUCCESESS at all means you SUCCEEDED, more means superior success! No SUCCESSES means you FAIL.
@BESW I'm not sure how this stacks up on word count, but I think I've covered everything. There's probably some more space to be gained there.
@doppelgreener There's a worrying amount of evidence on this site alone that a lot of people playing D&D 3/3.5/PF are unaware that they are 3 separate things.
user15026
@nitsua60 You need a passport but otherwise, yes provided you aren't like....breaking any rules.
user15026
They don't let you cross with just a license as id anymore as far as I know
@BESW I mean to express "you, the players, are playing the locals. this is your relationship to the foreigners: they've colonised your lands. could've happened recently or a long time ago."
@Asteria "Hafa" is actually an inquisitive; it roughly means "What?" "Hafa adai" is used for "hello" and literally means "What's up?" That phrase is often shorted to just "Hafa."
But "nai" is an intensifier, and so "Hafa nai" is belligerent or sarcastic, meaning something like "You got a problem?"
I almost jettisoned the friend/rival dynamic early on as just the product of a wild brainstorm, but it slowly tied everything else together and brought into view some themes that I'm very happy about.
@Adeptus Little subtle things like this mean the system has a lot of emergent mechanical and narrative themes that get pieced together as you keep reading and then more as you imagine how they'll play out. I enjoy that a lot.
Oh! Concept reinforcement that also frees 1 word: change "+1d6 if your FRIEND or RIVAL chooses to get involved." to "+1d6 if your FRIEND or RIVAL narrates their involvement."
If you need 'em, I think some single-digit word savings could be made elsewhere, e.g. "Any successes at all" -> "Any successes" or "Any successes whatsoever"
that said the dice mechanic is also very clear right now and i like that.
@BESW I just re-read and realised there's not just one difference, but one per player. That makes a good difference that makes it not so critical to ensure it's very very good - surely in a group of 4 at least 1-2 will be good and juicy. I like it.
@BESW In light of this earlier change, I'd change the "when" to "if" at the beginning of the option about narrating interference to lose a coin. Because it's optional.
Okay, one last sanity check on this thing before I submit it. Maybe someone who hasn't seen Colonypunk yet could take a look and see if it's coherent to new eyes?
This is not strictly a DnD5 question, but I have not seen any other game where creators share rules interpretations via social media.
Mike Mearls's tweet got me thinking about about the value and strength of these suggestions:
Does the paladin’s Great Weapon Fighting style apply to the radi...
> To resolve a tense interaction, roll 1d6; +1d6 when DIFFERENCES are relevant; +1d6 if your FRIEND or RIVAL narrates their involvement. - Interacting with LOCAL things (e.g. your customs, technology, geography): count dice showing OVER your number of coins as SUCCESSES. - Interacting with FOREIGN things (e.g. their customs, technology, bureaucracy): count dice showing UNDER your number of coins. One SUCCESS means you SUCCEED; more means superior success! No SUCCESSES? You FAIL.
"extraordinary" may be a more effective substitute for "superior"
(I can only imagine some of these words don't look like words to you anymore.)
It'd be nice to find a word other than "successes" to describe a happy die outcome, to make it distinct from the happy action resolution which is the result of a happy die outcome.
oh right, so we've got a word for "you got a dice with a nice number on it", and a word for "you got an outcome to the tense interaction that is beneficial as opposed to one that is bad / made things worse", and they're currently different forms of the same word and you're interested in distinguishing them further?
@Ahriman Do you have a moment? World of Darknesses uses a "count the number of dice exceeding this score" mechanic to resolve whether you succeed or fail at an action - do you know what words people use to describe the "good" dice? Hits, successes, gains, are ones we know of so far.
BESW's working on an RPG for the 200 word RPG challenge, and we're trying to find a workable alternative to "successes".
The challenge uses G Drive for the word count, and doesn't include the title.
(The title allows for an additional 45 characters on top of the 200 words in the body. And the CC-BY at the end is my own thing for the drafts; the submission form just has a check box for it.)
@Ahriman That's the crux of what we're after right now. Our limited question budget is making an alternative word for "success" look helpful - we're using it in one form to describe dice ("successes"), and in another form to describe the end result (fail/succeed). We might go with "hits" for the former except it sounds suggestsive of violence I guess.
@doppelgreener I've got my current draft on the top of the screen, and your suggestions copy-pasted into a second window on the bottom of the screen. I can see word counts for both, copy-paste to and from, edit one or the other, etc.
I've actually got four different "Actions" cards floating around. And whichever one I decide to use, I can just drag from the Ideas folder to the Draft folder and position it between the Token Start card and the Losing card.
> - Interacting with LOCAL things (e.g. your customs, technology, geography)? Count dice showing OVER your number of coins as WINS. - Interacting with FOREIGN things (e.g. their customs, technology, bureaucracy)? Instead count dice showing UNDER your number of coins as WINS. One WIN means you SUCCEED; more means extraordinary success! No WINS? You FAIL.
As a GM, can I roll in secret so my players don't even know I rolled?
For example, a PC walks past a secret door; if I ask the player to roll perception he may suspect there is something. Can I roll behind the GM screen for him to see if he passed the check and act accordingly? And I don't mean ...
"However, even if you roll in secret, players may still get suspicious. You're rolling for a reason after all and even though they didn't see the result, they can still hear the dice being rolled."
@DoomedMind well, my description depends on their rolls. A failure would give them false information or misleding etc. a close success, just the basics (something's off, you hear steps), and a good success means they've perceived it openly
- Interacting with LOCAL things (e.g. your customs, technology, geography)? Count dice showing OVER your number of coins as WINS. - With FOREIGN things (e.g. their customs, technology, bureaucracy), instead count dice showing UNDER your number of coins as WINS.
@Golokopitenko Depends on your paradigm. BESW has a story about a GM who absolutely insisted his NPC must heroically sacrifice himself to achieve a particular goal, despite the fact his characters were reality-warping mages and could enumerate several ways to resolve the situation and prevent the heroic sacrifice. The GM insisted.
If your players want to sit on the rails and see your story, go right ahead.
When I started my first D&D campaign as a DM, I accidentally rolled and confirmed a crit on a PC from a goblin. It was an instant kill as our campaign had no cleric. That time I decided to fudge the dice. Now, there's a similar problem, but this time the PCs are at 3rd level and they are dealing ...
This is not strictly a DnD5 question, but I have not seen any other game where creators share rules interpretations via social media.
Mike Mearls's tweet got me thinking about about the value and strength of these suggestions:
Does the paladin’s Great Weapon Fighting style apply to the radi...
