Ha! I found it!

101 Encounters for Harn, the fan-made book of "Seriously, you guys think half of this is FUN?"

Many months later...

@AlexP Isn't that the one that has basically "non-quests"?

Yes.

Some of them are quests.

Again, I'm inclined to ask "Why"

Fin. The end. That is an "encounter."

That is not an encounter. That is a waste of time.

Yeah, it's "Let's be authentically medieval by having so few wizards and dragons that they never matter."

If there was a machine to drain years off the GMs life and give them to someone else, well, he owes it to you.

@AlexP Ars Magica pulled off the "Authentically Medieval" thing and it had magic coming out the nose

In fairness, some are real adventures, if kinda brutal ones. The ghost ship at the beginning, for example, is supernatural, challenging, and evocative. It's kinda railroady but I think at least 50% of that is just the way these are written up as a series of "ifs."

What gets me is that people wrote a bunch of scenarios for adventurers in a world that is inimical to adventure. But, why are these all still targeting roving vagabonds?

How can they be railroady if the game is supposedly a very extreme realism simulator?

@shatterspike1 Well, the ghostship is railroady because you are just stuck on it by magic. And doing the wrong things tends to get you killed.

Sounds kind of like a miserable game to me.

I think this is also the problem of scenarios. I can play an enjoyable session with my friends, where they end up sucked onto the ghost ship and almost die and all this stuff. And I do X, Y, and Z in the moment to make it happen. But if I just write that down as a set of instructions... that doesn't work.

@AlexP Improvisation seems to work better, maybe?

Yeah, it's the fact that a lot of things modules tell you to do are fine as in-the-moment decisions based on the feel of the table.

Oh, okay, here's one... there's an adventure that's basically "You meet an astrologer out camping. She needs you to go to the store for bug balm. If you do so, it is easy." That is pretty tedious and boring, yes. But also!

@AlexP See, if it were my campaign, it'd turn out that the old man was being deliberately drugged to keep him from telling anyone what he actually knew, and the "child" and "watchers" are actually the best he could get to talking about something totally different.

Why are there a bunch of adventures that amount to "A stranger sends you on a dumb errand?" Who sends a whole group of people on their dumb errand?

Sounds like they were trying to emulate an MMO.

It seems like half of these seeds would make more sense if the party was a 10-year-old street urchin or something. "You, boy! Get me a paper and I'll give you a shilling!"

@BESW See, but that's actually interesting.

@AlexP Urchins & Usury?

@BESW Something like "The old man can't manage to say anything coherent, but if you investigate him for magic you realize his tongue has been cursed to only speak riddles and half-truths" would be fine.

I call it Kiri-kin-tha's first law of metagaming: "Nothing unimportant exists."

@AlexP "Well there's your problem. Looks like you've got ancient curse runes written in some incomprehensible language all over your tongue. Take these pills and call me in the morning."

By which I mean that the GM is free to introduce "world flavor" which has no intended significance, but the players are free to make such things important at their discretion.

I just can't get past how someone creates a "realistic" medieval world where someone will totally send half a dozen armed vagrants they just met, one of whom is probably a knight or a wizard or something, over to the next village to buy bug balm.

What is paid attention to, becomes important.

@AlexP Have you met the shop owner? She's a real ogre.

@AlexP It is also unrealistic because that use of the word "bug" didn't appear until the 17th century.

....actually, wait a minute.

Middle English "bugge" meant a scarecrow or hobgoblin.

@BESW I am paraphrasing.

Suddenly, this store run is an introductory quest for a much more interesting plot line.

> I realize that I am generalizing here, but, as is often the case when I generalize, I don't care. (Dave Barry)

[reads recent backlog, rolls his eyes, leaves]

@Zachiel OH NO YOU DON'T

[dimensional anchor]

Urgh... I want to write this setting to be less generic grimdark and more convey the stuff across that I want it to, which does perfectly fine through the houserules...

@shatterspike1 So, what makes it grimdark?

@AlexP Well, the whole cosmic horror thing for one. I'm okay with the grimdark, not so okay with the generic.

I could link to the thread on RPG.net, if you wanted to see

@shatterspike1 Sure, plz.

forum.rpg.net/…

Unity (chick on the left) has unusual levels of self-awareness, for a PC.

@BESW Quite.

@BESW This is quickly becoming one of my favorite DMing techniques. It's a way for players to exert influence on the story outside of their characters' capabilities, without breaking immersion in the process.

@BESW @Magician What is that? Introducing unimportant details which the players assume is amazingly important, and letting them go with that?

I go one step further: I don't assign importance to most details beforehand. There's plot I know is happening, and a bunch of stuff around it that might be interesting and tie in somehow.

In our tremulus game, we've had two NPC companions chosen by one of the players as part of their playbook, fellow academic assistants. I've immediately asked "so, which one of the two did you have an affair with, and how did it end?"

That NPC has progressed, session from session, from a somewhat star-struck former student to a recent widow, to a widow who was very callous about the husband's death, to a widow whose husband died after downright mysterious circumstances, to, eventually, a spider-woman witch who died to protect her lover while battling a greater evil. All because PCs kept poking at her.

That NPC didn't exist before the first session. And each step of her transformation was in response to player interest. She kept surprising them, and me as well.

This method felt particularly appropriate for an investigative horror game such as tremulus, where there's some unpleasantness beneath every rock, something moist and scuttling, and PCs just keep turning rocks over.

Voldemort with various kinds of facial hair (instructions included)

@Magician That is quite incredible O_O

I'm not sure if my players have caught on to this, or if it's been the plan from the start, but one of the PCs has gradually transformed in our eyes as well, from a comically angry old man to someone who has abused, and likely killed his wife. That made even my jaw drop, considering he had just brought her back to life (or asked a cosmic horror to do so, at any rate). He was also the only PC who got a remotely happy ending.

@mxyzplk (and others): Does this question count as a game rec question that's too broad or not great? Especially considering that quote from mxyzplk in the sidebar - " game-recs should have either much more detailed specs, or they should really be asking about the mechanics not a list of games." - I suspect this shouldn't be asking for games that do this, but how to do this. Though I'm not sure how such a question would look.

@Magician How did all this happen?

Did you ask them more questions like the affair question?

> It shouldn't be specific to any mechanics, as we've already decided on a system to play, just pure personality.

This part makes me think it's not going to generate many great answers.

Because it's kind of a recommend-me-a-questionaire-I-can-slot-in question.

Which is a fine question, but not sure it works for SE.

@AlexP Right. It's not even asking for games, it's just asking for questionnaires - ones which are good enough to be in games.

@JonathanHobbs It was a back-and-forth we've had with the player. His character, Pennysworth, was being comically terrible to his assistant that came with the antique shop he bought, so she turned out to be the reason the previous owner had died (again, not at all the plan at the start), and tried to burn him with the shop, emulating the plot-related torchings that were going on. This caused us to re-examine Pennysworth's behavior.

We knew he had a wife who died, but it came as a surprise when he asked the cosmic horror to resurrect her after hijacking the cultists' ritual. It came as an even greater surprise when he comforted her, newly embodied, with "It's all right, you're alive, no one's going to hurt you anymore, not even me."

So... yeah. Find something that interests players, kick it over, see what comes scuttling out.

@Magician Huh. Interesting!

This is part of why I don't especially believe in backstories.

Two-three sentences, yeah, fine.

@AlexP Yup! I don't know if the player knew this from the start and it has guided his roleplaying, or if it has emerged from said roleplaying. But that's the whole point - it doesn't matter.

I don't mind a bit of mechanical "backstory," though, I suppose.

I like the "questions" format of Mouse Guard chargen, even if it does take a bit.

For instance.

@AlexP Backstories can be important depending on how you play your characters. I have played characters with next to no knowledge of their past and developed them as I went. For an impending Pathfinder game, though, I'm making a druid - and I want to know what she's been through and how it's shaped her.

She's a human, and she lived happily with her family for a while. She had two younger siblings, and I think she lost one of them. I think, also, she tried to destroy some stuff and got on the bad side of a criminal organisation she didn't realise she was interfering with.

As a child, she was also brought fantastic tales by a family friend who was a traveller who showed up from time to time.

I think she also ran away from home - her sibling may have been killed by the aforementioned organisation. She also joined a druid circle, though I'm not sure what the precise chronological placement of that is.

Her first adventure is actually going to be that occasion she wrecks some stuff and gets on that organisation's bad side.

I had a rough idea of how I wanted to play her beforehand, but all of this helps me get a better idea of who she is and how to play her - and why she is that way.

Good day. I come here in the form of a ChatBot, Zirak type with modifications. Invoke me with !/ followed by your command. For example:

!/listcommands

@vedantchandra birthday, unicorn, flip, docs, catgif, meow, cat, whoami, help, listen, eval, live, die, refresh, forget, ban, unban, info, jquery, choose, user, listcommands, purgecommands, define, norris, urban, parse, tell, mdn, accept, addid, awsm, beautify, convert, get, google, hang, karma, learn, mustache, nudge, reject, remove, spec, stat, timer, todo, undo, userquality (page 0/0)

Use any of the above commands to invoke me. Have a great day!

Ah, silly silly silly cheese.

> He can carry about 800,000,000,000,000,000,000 times the mass of the observable universe - and still be at light encumbrance.

@BESW hello there! It seems we have a chatbot?

@Metool Oh, cool. writing.se has been using one recently.

!/help cat

Hrum.

!/catgif

!/cat

Nope, that doesn't work.

Ummm.

!/listcommands

Yeah, not seeing it.

!/helloyouarebroken

!/@vedantchandra catgif

@vedantchandra !/catgif

welp.

bot author, you have some work to do

!!cat

(That's the command syntax the writing.se bot uses.)

@Magician This. @JonathanHobbs For me, I'd have a lot of half-formed ideas at the start of a campaign. I wasn't sure where they'd go, but I'd develop the first segment of each of them and spread them in front of the players during the first few sessions.

The most blunt way I've ever done it was with an adventuring guild bulletin board.

@BESW I see. C:

That makes it clear.

Even if they didn't go see the catfolk shaman, if they sounded interested in him I'd make a note and have him show up some time later.

If they didn't seem interested, he'd never be heard from again.

Nothing unimportant exists: If it is unimportant, it ceases to exist.

Kiri-kin-tha's first law of metagaming simultaneously justifies the existence of important things, and causes things which are not important to cease to be.

Hey guys I'm the bot AND bot owner

I was just testing the bot

Full functionality online within a week

Thanks

Kiri-kin-tha ?

@InbarRose Kiri-kin-tha.

@BESW Sounds like something I should be employing myself, especially in a game where my characters can help define the world with me.

@Metool I left by walking. I was sleeping one room above if you really needed me. XD (I sort of missed these things. Must be masochism.)

This is an amazing Twitter feed.

Quote of the day: "It's more of an 'employees only' way to die."

Hey, anybody got a lot of experience with the various Google services? I'm wondering if they ever use just the first name of a person's account.

@BESW I had some experience, but maybe not on what you call services. Can you be more specific?

When referring to another user, does Google commonly/ever use something other than the full first/last name? I'm putting together a professional email for selling my dad's stock photos. If I put something like "Eric Fairchild," I'd rather that Google doesn't decide I should be called "Eric."

Seems unprofessional.

But the Internet is big on enforcing informality.

Ooooh. I don't know. There's an option on gmail that lets you decide by which name your names are sent, so if you out "Eric Fairchild" in that field it should work, but.

I had stange experiences with that thing.

Like, I know Facebook is all about getting way too familiar with my first name.

It's all "Eric, David tagged you in a picture posted by Richard!"

And I'm all "Dude, that's Dr. Khorram and Judge Benson to you, Mister Book."

My facebook uses names and surnames, unless that users have only named themselves "David" and "Richard"

I'd be checking if my memory is just tricking me into believing that, but I didn't get tagged in any photo recently.

[poke] hello!

Hey

Hey.

@BESW My god, it's almost an exact description of a Gamma World campaign I ran in high-school!

@BESW Could test this.

@JonathanHobbs Correct, I don't think that's a good game-rec question

It's not hard to transform all these not-really-game-rec questions into technique questions. Instead of asking for games, you ask "What is the thing X you have used/seen used most successfully for detailed purpose Y?"

Whether X is diceless mechanic or character background generation or whatever. The Y is the harder part.

I know often people want "a big list, let me choose" but that a) pulls a lot of answers that don't hit Good Subjective, Bad Subjective (I googled a game that has that! Look at me, maybe I'll get some rep!) and b) it's not like you're really going to try them all. This formula helps draw GS/BS answers tuned to your use case. "I am curious" is not a problem in the RPG.SE definition of such.

Heading out in half an hour to take 15+ youth on a hike. Wish me minimal bleeding and nobody falling off a cliff.

Don't push over any 200-million-year-old rock formations, also.

It seems to be a thing recently.

Since we're only 30 million years old, no worries.

So, okay, the other thing that rubs me the wrong way about "101 Encounters" (see last night's conversation) is that it seems like it's written from the mindset that actual medieval history is fundamentally un-fun and crappy. Like how it's a magical world, with monsters and wizards and dimensional gateways, but tons and tons of the adventures seeds are about how folk beliefs are stupid dirty superstition.