@Ben my time, sorry about that (i.e. 24h from now)

Tips on starting first session of campaign? It's like the first day of class. No matter how many times I've done it, I still feel unsure heading into it....

@Shalvenay Well that makes it 10 am for me. I sleep in on Saturdays, so maybe around 12?

@Ben yeah, that might work

@nitsua60 Start with snacks and time for socialising. Cue entry into the session with an audio/spacial change, like turning off the party music or moving to a different part of the room.

@Shalvenay sounds good

Ask players to help distribute materials, and have a brief "Goals of game" talk (if you're a GM who decides those things) or discussion (if you're a GM who invites the group to decide those things).

It might be good to mention lines and veils.

Hash out bookkeeping if necessary: schedules, food, venue changes, etc.

Okay, then! Starting play itself: throw them into a tense situation. Worry about background "how we got here" stuff later.

@nitsua60 The opening line for one game we had was "you wake up, dead."

It can be a mission briefing, if that's tense (like Majestic 12). Or have something blow up mid-briefing. Or start the game when the mission is going sour.

start mid-mission could work

"So, you're hip-deep in rust monsters and the Eye of Argon's many faucets are spewing out gelatinous oozes instead of water. Then things get bad."

Let complexity build, don't start them off with a ton of stuff to remember and process.

Immediate situation with immediate threat.

@Ben A friend of mine makes & sells chainmail dice bags (and chainmail other-things)

One of my friends has one of those :) He has a metal dice set to match haha

I've also seen some on amazon... Bag of Holding - inspired by Crown Royal bags / reversible self-standing bag

Yeah I've seen these as well

Velour gem pouches work very well for small dice sets too.

Woo! I repcapped on SF&F! I think that's the first time on any Stack

Grats!

@Adeptus well done!

@Adeptus oh nice! Love chainmail stuff :P

@Adeptus OMG I love his tumbler accessory for the hand drill!

Quick, who's nearby and can direct me to the "permanent injuries" table in 5e (or whatever it's called)

don't recall one

any thoughts on which book?

@nitsua60 I believe it was in the DMG

[rummaging...]

DMG 272, "Lingering Injuries"

have it on hand?

@nitsua60 I do not, good sir

/madam

one of the two will suffice =)

I've got it up right now--what do you want to know?

d20

There was only a handful of them wasn't there? And I can basically roll for one yeah?

Minor Scar

nine of 'em

1=lose an eye

2=lose arm or hand

3=lose foot or leg

4=limp

5-7=internal injury

8-10=broken ribs

11-13=horrible scar

14-16=festering wound

17-20=minor scar

they've all got descriptions with some mechanical implications, too.

what's the difference between a horrible and a minor scar?

major imposes disadv. on persuasion, adv. on intimidation. Minor has no "adverse effect." Both can be cleared up by any 6th-level or higher healing magic.

Honestly, I'd really prefer the horrible scar

[aside] "that can be arranged..."

=D

what do the internal injury/festering wound do?

internal injury forces con saves against losing reaction whenever an action is taken in combat

festering wound starts screwing with max hp

ok, so if I take a reaction (like the sentinel feat), I have to make a con save?

no, when you take an action you make the save; if you fail you can't react until your next turn.

I.e. the thing you do (action) causes you pain enough to possibly distract you, putting reactions off the table.

@nitsua60 Ohhh, ok, so I can't use my sentinel feat until next round

If I fail the con save

Right. This is "you can take a swing, but you'll be wincing and doubled over afterward, catching your breath."

(on a failed save)

That makes sense

d20

what does broken ribs do

same as internal injury, but lower DC on the save. (10 for broken ribs, 15 for internal injury.)

those two seem like they can be healed, even just over time

whereas the loss of limb seem more permanent, requiring magic to heal them

ten days' rest, or magical healing for ribs/internal

true, N days rest generally won't bring back a hand =)

Well fair enough, I'll have a play with that :)

alright. night, all.

o/

\o

morning o/

afternoon

Hullo lads and ladies

hello

time is just flying by today, morning to afternoon just like that XD

Last night in our Sunless Fate game, I compelled an Unaccountably Peckish PC to try and eat the peg leg of another PC.

lol,.. the peg leg?

that seems like the least helpful part to try

not that I would endorse actual cannibalism

Being Unaccountably Peckish makes you crave strange things. Including cannibalism.

ah, ok

just another really weird thing

if more off putting than some of the other weird things

sunless sea tabletop?

@Sejanus Indeed! I've been running it for a couple months, and wrote two posts on how to do it so far.

what mechanics do you use?

Fate

Sunless Fate, by yours truly.

It works really well.

sounds interesting

@Magician I am glad all your effort led to a satisfying payoff :)

@Magician sunless sea, as in this one? store.steampowered.com/app/304650

Indeed!

I only knew about it before it was talked of here because it was on steam

well, knew of it anyway

about implies I had any knowledge of it besides that it existed

XD

It is already the strangest, but possibly the most enjoyable game I've ever run.

ahh man, that game is amazing. I love the idea of an TRPG built around it. Your take on it seems really interesting, I bet it was awesome

One of my stunts is in there! :D

@doppelgreener eyyy! Which one's yours?

@Asteria "They should get that looked at!", one of the Surgeon stunts.

Possibly one of the rat ones, too? Though those're largely BESW's fault.

I take full and gleeful responsibility.

@doppelgreener Reading that one, I was imagining a little surgeon pointing at a guy with a peg leg like "GUYS! GUYS! He's got no leg! Lookee! I'm helping!"

@Asteria Hahaha. I was thinking it'd actually be something like that. "The Dread Pirate Roberts boards your ship and draws his sword." "It's a good thing he's got cataracts!"

Can I get a sanity check on this answer? Especially if I'm reading the question right.

d6

lol

[goes mad]

welp, guess we need a new BESW

@BESW He's reading it like he gets a +2 merely for the fact he has a hammer.

@BESW deep breaths. Be okay

@doppelgreener Which is sometimes true! It depends entirely on the specific Fate flavour.

I would right away respond with something to the effect of: You don't get that +2 unless you're invoking your sword aspect, or you have a stunt saying you get a +2, or something like that is happening. But it will make your task much easier having one! Breaking down a thick wooden door with just your hands is very hard (+10, maybe even impossible), but a big enough hammer or enough explosives could make it easy, perhaps even easy enough you wouldn't call for a roll.

(Except if you wanted to do it cleanly/quickly/silently)

Hmm. You should present that as a separate answer!

Perhaps!

i see you get into that stuff early (i just skimmed), but I would just get that out of the way asap.

i won't be able to do answer-writing for a few hours i think.

And I'm heading out myself.

@doppelgreener So what's the functional difference between "you get +2 to the check because you have a hammer" and "the difficulty is lowered by 2 because you have the hammer"? :P

@Magician Functionally nothing, methodologically it's everything.

lol

@doppelgreener ...ish.

Ok, nothing-ish.

(there's some circumstances it'd matter, surely)

By "methodology," you're referencing Fate's avoidance of penalties, preferring instead to boost the other side.

Mainly, the example I gave said it went from +10 to easy or not even worth rolling for. The method isn't "you have a thing that helps, so you get +2." It's "let's consider what you're doing and assess how hard it'd be."

But there's a difference between penalising a skill/approach, and taking circumstances into account when setting a previously un-determined difficulty.

Bare hands on sturdy wooden door: very hard. A hammer: much easier. A very very big hammer: now we're just rolling to see if you do it quickly or quietly, and if neither are important, we're not even rolling at all. Some explosive: yeah, that door's a goner, though I might compel you later for being out of explosives (you used up your last on that door, perhaps without realising it was your last).

@BESW So what if the player first went "I want to break down the door", heard the difficulty would be 5, remembered they had a hammer, and found out the difficulty is now 3? Does the previous instantiation of difficulty matter?

(I agree that having the right tool for the job may mean there's no roll required at all)

@BESW I do not mean that by methodology, I mean "the fact you have a hammer doesn't mean you get a bonus to this hard task, it means we re-assess the situation completely." Totally different method of looking at the fact you have just pulled out a hammer.

I'm gonna dump all of this into an answer when I next get the chance.

Hrm. This rubs me the wrong way. I think... I think it's legit to say you can't break down a heavy door without a tool. In this case, having a hammer gives you permission to make a check, and we can figure out the difficulty. I think it's also legit to say the difficulty to break down the door is 5, and a hammer makes the task easier by giving you +2. You're doing the same thing, hammering (heh) on the door, just better.

But if it's possible to break down the door through brute force, gaining a hammer doesn't change the situation enough to reevaluate it entirely.

You can re-evaluate it entirely and then decide to handle it exactly the same way, but I think it's important to take a step back and go "okay, what's going on in the scenario now?" and see if how you chose to handle it before someone pulled out a hammer is still relevant. (It might be! But it's important to take a moment to ask yourself that.)

Sure. And in general, that's the correct approach. But in the specific scenario of hammer-to-the-door, saying "no, you don't ever get +2 without paying a fate point, instead we'll lower the difficulty by 2 because it makes sense" seems to be drawing lines in the sand.

@Magician I never suggested "we lower the difficulty by 2", though.

Right. The difficulty was 5 in the previous scenario, and is now 3 in an entirely different scenario. Unrelated.

Mate. I never said that either. I did say re-assess the difficulty. That might be a difference of 5 -> 3, or a difference of 8 -> 2, or a difference of 10 -> "there's no need to roll here".

I never said "instead of a +2 make it 2 easier", in fact that's the not-my-way to look at it, pretty much the same thing as giving it +2.

I'm just not seeing how your way of looking at it is different, is all.

I'll be explaining better later in an answer, mayhaps. I suspect you're also looking at the end result (the difficulty changes) when for me the important difference is the thinking that went into getting there.

Specifically. If we start with difficulty X to break down the door. How is saying "with a hammer, the situation is different and the difficulty is now Y" different from saying "the hammer gives you a bonus of (X-Y)"?

This does hinge on my understanding that hammer doesn't change the approach in question, like explosives or a lockpick might.

@Magician BESW was the one to say "ish" after I said functionally nothing, you may want to ask him what he was thinking of. For me it's just: there may be a fate rule or stunt that cares, somewhere, maybe, in some game?

Updated my answer to include that concept.

@BESW oh hi! I noticed something:

> There is no such thing as a weapon (or anything else in a Fate game) without an aspect, so invoke away!

How about this?

> There is no such thing as a weapon (or anything else noteworthy in a Fate game) without an aspect

This benign sentence could imply "every fact has an aspect" so you may want to retinker that sentence later. (Contrast, lots of things don't have aspects until we want to interact with them mechanically.)

I might go for "mechanically important" over "noteworthy" myself.

(That is a suggestion)

"Noteworthy" is a direct line from the Fate Core, which is quoted in the answers I link in the next paragraph.

Oh right. Ok, cool.

I'm leaning on the Stack here for the ground that's already been covered.

All is well with that then. I forgot about that next paragraph

I hate to make edits that consist of a single letter, but if you don't correctly use "to" or "too" I will - mainly because I have this irrational need for everything I am looking at to be grammatically correct.

hola o/

@DavidWilkins I originally started editing that post just to correct the to/too, and ended up making a bunch of other changes — then forgot to fix the title I'd originally started the edit for. >.< So, good catch!

@SevenSidedDie that's hilarious!