TRPG General Chat

I like 4e's "minions" concept, since it explicitly states that the rules aren't there for simulationist realism, but for narrative play.

To quote Austin Powers, these minions, in addition to their 1 HP, had lives and families and friends. But in the context of an adventure, they're minions, and should be treated as such in the rules.

And the corollary: PCs are murderhobos. Successful NPCs need to be able to withstand PC antics. To do that they must be high level. QED, successful NPCs must be murderhobos or they will be hobomurdered.

3

@BESW Word.

And yes, 4e deals with this very elegantly by providing a non-level-dependent measure of NPC influence on the PCs.

In non-4e editions, "level" or "challenge rating" is the only way to quantify the effectiveness of a creature's ability to influence its surroundings. Bigger number means bigger effect.

The attempt in 3.5 to add "NPC levels" in Aristocrat or Merchant was mostly sad, admitting there was a problem but not really effecting a solution.

10:13 AM

Ironically for a game like 3.5 that revels in unnecessary subsystems to model every small thing, "level" is a single system used to represent too many things.

The problem here is easily seen if you look at our vision of the D&D world. Is it a place were Asmodeus and Pelor influence the world? No, it's a world where relatively low-level creatures like goblins and yuan-ti and mind flayers are the dominant influences.

To get back to the original topic, magocracies: The really powerful stuff has to be hidden away or limited because it'd blow most PCs out of the water and that is bad for the game.

But it makes no sense because "level" is the only real way to measure all kinds of power, and it's too broad a measure to account for the many kinds of power and influence.

Look at this post:

giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=185424

So the bigger and badder a thing is mechanically, the less influence it can be allowed to have on the story because it's being given power in all ways rather than just the appropriate power niche.

Never mind that is math is fundamentally flawed, that's not the point.

The point is that in a murderhobo economy, you'll see random civilians fighting each other to the death for XP. Want a raise? Wealth By Level says you gotta kill your neighbor.

Yup.

Not to tout my own horn (too much; today;), but I talk about this a bit at the end of the latest post on Settings, Systems and Stories. Namely, that rules tend to be written for a single facet of the game world, and extrapolating them to the entire world, while a natural instinct, is entirely unjustified.

10:19 AM

Tying everything to level turns what's supposed to be a meta conceit into an insanely precious commodity... which then becomes a meta-level handicap for higher-level NPCs.

D&D/AD&D1e had an easily abused rule about treasure-as-XP (1gp = 1xp, IIRC) which was supposed to make looting as lucrative as murdering.

Of course, my PCs started looting each other, circularly, for infinite XP.

(Hey, we were 11!)

I've seen that behavior in much more ostensibly-mature groups.

I had one group where I had to lay down this rule: If you loot the body of your fallen comrade, that player's next character starts naked.

It was awful, but it got the point across.

@BESW We've had those debates...

I think I once threatened that the entire party would be stalked by impish pixies who steal your stuff while you sleep and replace it with copies that turn to dry leaves in the middle of combat.

2

@Magician, you're familiar with Ars Magica rules, right? Can I run a rule design question by you?

10:34 AM

You can try. I'm... casually competent as a player.

I'm designning a new virtue for my new character. Plague Magic, modeled after Faerie Magic.

(Central conceit is that the Black Death became a new Realm of power)

I was wondering how to model it, apart from letting me tap Plague Auras and Plague vis)

I was thinking of making Touch-based spells the same level as Personal spells (one magnitude less) since the plague spreads by touch.

Hrm. Well, Faerie Magic's interesting bits are in new durations and ranges, i.e. Road, Bargain, Bloodline.

I was thinking of adding those, like "Spreads on Touch" as a Target.

Infectious magic. Eeeeee.

Target:Plague

The problem is that it really wouldn't affect my rego-casting telekinesis-focused character, which is a bummer.

10:39 AM

Duration: Plague (until someone dies of it), can only be cast on Plague targets.

I am reminded of 3.5's cyst magic.

Well, I can see a tricky Target that affects a single person, but can be transmitted by touch while the spell is active.

Cyst magic. eww.

@Magician That's what I was thinking. Good from game-design perpective, less for my plague-focused character.

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan You get to plant cysts in people which then let you do all kinds of nasty things to them, from spying to controlling to killing, as you level up.

ew

10:42 AM

As for linking this to a rego telekinesis, that's easy. "Here, have a nasty spell. Now I'm gonna grab you and smush you all over other people."

Actually. A spell that can be put into anything, "infecting" it.

I think @Magician's talking about a plague-based version where you can't actually induce the plague, but for people who already have the plague it's a "welcome" mat for you to influence them in all kinds of ways.

The trick is then to get others to touch it... Or hit them with it.

Basically, the plague becomes a backdoor to hacking the person.

@BESW That is one of the ideas, yes.

Problem is, once someone has the plague, anything I do to them is basically moot.

10:44 AM

@AvnerShahar-Kashtan Psh.

One metaphysical idea we worked on for the Plague realm is that its magic is based on spreading and changing, moving from person to person and changing them.

Perhaps this touch-transmitted thingo bypasses Parma Magica (magic resistance), using health check of some kind instead.

Be creative. Manipulate them into killing a guy you want dead, or get them to spread the plague to others, or to spread a rumor.

Maybe you could even cause the plague to go dormant in them and turn them into a Typhoid Mary.

Get a whole army of infected-but-not-advancing plague victims to spy for you, do your dirty work.

I don't actually want them to have the plague. My master experimented in tapping (what turned out to be) the plague and based my training on that source. I'm not actually a plague carrier or want to be.

Faerie Magic taps the Faerie Realm, it doesn't necessarily mean you're a faerie.

Can you formulate what Plague Realm is, then? What justifies it being a whole Realm, and not a tiny cult.

(noting that Merinita using Faerie Magic are, indeed, a small cult).

10:50 AM

I purposefully left it vague so it can be explored during the game. What I do have is that my master thought he had a breakthrough, discovering a new realm he called the Life realm (and renaming the Magic realm as the World realm). Dealing with the essences shared with men and animals and plants. Life and death.

That might actually still be true.

...your master was trying to become a Jedi?

However, he only discovered it because the Plague, being the largest manifestation of that realm's power, was about to burst, leading to that realm's power being extra strong.

He discovered he couldn't really tap into that power fully, because his own magical gifts were opened so as to be aligned to the Magic realm.

So it's bio-realm as imagined by 13th century philosophers? Ow. That's gonna be headache inducing. We've had internal hemorrhage cause happiness. Because imbalance of humours.

So he took me as apprentice and opened my Gift aligned (crudely, since this was experimental) to both the Life/Plague and Magic realms.

I'm not trying to adhere to purely Aristotelian ideals.

So basically I'm the only one (as far as I know) to have these powers.

Does the Life realm surround and penetrate us, binding the galaxy together?

10:53 AM

And my master is out there somewhere, and I really want to find him and undetstand what he did to me and why, since I actually don't know, in-character, any of what I just explained.

Yes, technically, but we're playing Ars Magica based only on the original trilogy, so no midichlorians.

Life/Plague Realm is potentially biosphere, then. Maybe. To be explored in play.

Actually, my current thoughts is that this fifth realm is only a temporary anomaly, created by the plague, not causing it, and that at some point the disturbance in hte force will subside and the world return to its 4-pole symmetry.

But I'll let that be sorted out in-play by whomever's running.

Sort of like the 4e notion that psionic power only exists as the universe's auto-immune response to Far Realm influence?

Sounds about right.

(Relocating. Be back soon)

Perhaps worth looking at is Leper magic of house Tytalus (Societates). I don't think it's what you're after, but still.

Q: Tag Request: God Machine Rules Update

11:02 AM

If I knew more about AM's systems.... ah, well.

The Oracle

11:19 AM

0

I would like to request that someone with higher privileges than me create some or all of the the following tags, and mark them as aliases. God-Machine God-Machine-Rules-Update nnwod nwod-GMC wod-2.5 new new world of darkness new new wod As far as I can tell there is no commonly used acronym ...

11:32 AM

I'm being vague, I know. I want to take the essence of the plague, divorce it from the actual plague, extract from it various abstract concepts it embodies, and use them as the concepts behind the magic.

Okay, so what's the "essence of plague"?

One idea that was tossed around, which I mentioned earlier, is that its central dynamic is one of spreading and transforming.

So... contagious morphism.

Or morphic contagion.

It fits well with ArM's technique-driven magic system (emphasize Muto and Rego, penalize Creo and Perdo)

...it's memetic.

11:37 AM

Exactly.

So the plague is a destructive meme?

Or is "destruction" only a side effect?

What is the plague a meme of?

Despair? Death?

Good question.

It might be a natural eruption of the relevant magic. It could be the result of someone tapping into this power source and losing control. It doesn't have to be of something, it could just be.

Or perhaps something else - an evil ritual, a minor disease, something else entirely - that in conjunction with this new form of magic turned into the plague.

I thought you were speculating that the new magic was symptomatic of the plague, not causal.

Of course, I can try and take it to more philosophical directions. The increased urbanization and burgeoning population of European civilization has tipped over some balance. There are more living than dead, and something tries to redress that.

Not sure I want to go there.

@BESW I'm throwing ideas around.

Aight.

Well, to be literal, the plague is physically caused by urbanization.

Hmm.

Cities as intense congregations of life.

Ooer

Okay, space/time/gravity theory, the vision of the fabric of space/time as a rubber sheet, and mass pulls the sheet down to create depressions.

11:43 AM

A bit too modern a concept for ArM, I think.

But go ahead, I want to hear it. :)

Postulate: The "life realm" is not new, it has always existed, but remained unnoticeable because life was spread relatively evenly across the world.

Its influence was evenly balanced, and so it never had any major impact.

But cities create dense areas of life, which imbalance the influence of the life/death realm.

The plague is a world-level symptom of an imbalance in societal humors.

Effectively, Europe's humors are out of balance and so it gets a fever.

I imagine the idea of societal/global humors is incompatible with the ArM system, though.

As I said earlier, we're far from sticklers to Aristotelian principles.

If it's cool and interesting and doesn't feel too modern, it can work.

And this can certainly work, treating Europe as a living body with imbalanced humors.

That would mean your magical powers would be societal.

Summon flash mob IV, anyone?

Not as such. Not in any immediate level. Long term effects such as urbanization or depopulation affect it (which already fits into previously established themes in the campaign), but just having a new town established wouldn't change much.

We're talking Longue durée here.

12:01 PM

So what would you be able to do with a life/death realm, which when imbalanced causes lethal memes?

We get hats now? :D

Blog - Stack Exchange: Winter Bash 2013 is here!

@ProfessorLokiCaprion It's a December holiday thing.

Abby T. Miller on December 15, 2013

The gatherings of family and friends, the giving and receiving of gifts, the making and/or breaking of New Year’s resolutions – however you and yours celebrate, the end of a calendar year heralds many traditions.

Here at Stack Exchange, we wanted to get each of you an awesome, personal gift, and mail it to you as our way of saying “thanks.” But our accountant pointed out that there are 4.5 million of you, which promptly reminded us that the holidays aren’t about gifts. The real spirit of the holidays can only be captured with… …

I saw. I only got one hat.

Long story short: do stuff on the site, get hats based on what you do. Choose which hat you want your avatar to wear.

The more active you are, the more hats you unlock.

How's your Torgery going?

12:25 PM

(also: hats go when winterbash ends; they aren't for keeps, so don't spend sleepless nights working away at a limited edition hat)

OH MY GOD THEY ADDED HATS TO CHAT

C8

this pleases me immensely

@BESW Wonderfully! I just finished making my Drama deck!

I haven't been watching; have they also added the sleigh to chat?

BESW has a hat for having messages in chat starred. This surprises me not at all.

Yeah, I'll wear that hat.

I only have the Hannukah hat, and I don't think it'd be right for me of no faith to wear it.

12:29 PM

@ProfessorLokiCaprion That is up to you; I am not sure anyone would be particularly concerned by it.

@JonathanHobbs More a personal thing, really! I have no particular faith, myself, but deeply respect that of others.

I want that Hi-Ho Silver mask, actually!

...I don't see my hat in chat. Does anyone else?

I don't!

Alas.

Hah, there it is.

Aha! XD

12:36 PM

@ProfessorLokiCaprion Then that is quite fair :)

For those not familiar with Torg, there's a deck of about 160 cards like this, where players can collect them for bonuses, but the flip side is how initiative is determined.

I had to redo the whole deck to fit the Fate system, and now I have to find a printer.

(I mean someone to professionally print the cards; for now, I'm sleeving Basic Lands from magic and sticking paper printouts of my cards in there)

@ProfessorLokiCaprion That's how we did 4e power cards for two years.

(With colored pencil for marking at-will/encounter/daily/items, because I was using a b&w printer.)

@BESW And that's what my local game store owners suggested, too; he knows plenty of indie game designers who've done that for their playtests. But I'm just a perfectionist. I've found a few places that will print custom decks for a relatively reasonable fee, I just can't find any testaments to their quality.

@GMNoob [wave]

Hi

anyone have deep insightful thoughts about virtual table tops?

12:44 PM

@GMNoob Well, I've only run them through a normal chat room on a dice roller I scripted with PHP, myself.

@GMNoob i have insightful thoughts that go so deep i haven't seen the bottom yet and they may have collapsed into a black hole somewhere down there so i dare not dive too far

this is not entirely serious but i have thought about them and am designing one

Do you mean virtual tabletop softwares, or just running them online in general?

@ProfessorLokiCaprion yes!

@Jonathan, have you used most of the options available out there? What do you find lacking that makes you want to design your own?

I'm trying to decide if going down this rabbit hole will be good for my group, or to best avoid it.

@GMNoob Well, specifically he's building a tabletop for Fate games, because there's no existing service for it.

I can only attest to the personal/non-technical side of it. The logistics, I suppose you could say.

12:53 PM

What system are you looking to use? That has a lot to do with which and whether.

It can work, but you have to worry about things like slow typists and bad connections.

The few times I've used an online tabletop as a GM, I've had major problems with the fiddly bits re: setting up maps and environments and plugging in the NPCs each time (it turned out to be a major time sink).

And when I was a player in such a system, my speed at typing meant I had to be really careful or I'd drown out everyone else's contributions.

We play WFRP, and I'll be starting a DnD next campaign soon.

We currently play in person, with the occasional, Google hangout when people can't make it.

we all agree, that it's much better in person.

Online play has a different tempo and a different texture.

I want to try to game more often, but the only way that will happen, is if we have a quick and easy to use virtual table top, to be used between times when we can meet in person.

12:57 PM

Getting used to that is rough.

Right. You can't always get as much done per session, because saying things is a lot faster than typing them. But you can also describe things a bit better, if you're an expressive writer.

@BESW That has been my experience as well. I've never made it past the setup to actually attempt a game. :)

@ProfessorLokiCaprion Don't most VTT have voice/video bits to them now?

@GMNoob Oh, I'm sure they do! I've always been uncomfortable with voice, though.

I did have success with a group where one player was on Skype while the rest of us were in the room.

My plan is to run through a 15-20 level campaign starting from level 1, in 1-2 hour "episodes" Hopefully giving enough XP to level up every 2 "episodes" (or more often if need be)

1:00 PM

We pointed my camera at the map and used a virtual tabletop to track just his stats.

@BESW why not just pen and paper, or notepad?

Pre-entered skills and abilities meant he could just roll with a click and get the modifiers added in automatically, and I could see the result.

It let he and I collaborate on his stats and rolls as if he were there at the table.

GMNoob!

been a little while :)

@BESW it worked well?

@waxeagle Hi! Yes it has :(

@GMNoob Yup.

1:08 PM

@GMNoob how are things in your corner of the world?

think it would have worked with more than one person?

But a lot of it was down to the fact that the whole group had played together in person for at least a year before the one player moved away, and we kept in touch over instant message between sessions.

Snowy :)

@GMNoob tis the season :)

@GMNoob For us? Probably not.

1:09 PM

It's not supposed to be, it's just supposed to be rainy :)

We tried a similar setup with everyone online and using the online map tool a year later after everyone had scattered to the far corners of the globe, and it failed.

However, I can't be sure that was because we were online: we also had new players we hadn't worked with in person before, and the GM was different.

@BESW Why did it fail?

@GMNoob lol, it's been rainy here, we had a dusting of snow yesterday morning, but it wasn't anything to take the kids out to play in

@GMNoob Time zone differences were the most obvious cause, but we also had constant mechanical conflicts because everyone was using different operating systems, and there was a MASSIVE difference between players' reaction times both typing and speaking.

In person you can see when someone needs a minute to think of an in-character response, and everyone will wait.

With text and voice--even with video--that's not so obvious.

Add in distance delay, and you get a mess of people talking over the top of each other without meaning to.

When I ran a chat-based game here, we designed a typing indicator script so we'd be able to tell if someone was still typing or if they were done.

Darn

Sounds like all the problems we have had with Google Hangout

1:12 PM

One-on-one, it works fine.

And if the group has really solid chemistry already, that helps a lot.

I was hoping that having a map to look at, and buttons to press for attacks, would aleviate that problem a bit.

If everyone can anticipate each others' cues, a lot of the stepping on toes goes away.

Now, it's worth noting that I haven't used any virtual tabletops since about 2008.

@GMNoob I've used Roll20. There isn't a Fate tabletop simulator, so I'm making my own.

I'm sure the interfaces have improved a great deal.

We tend to spend about 20% of our time with google hangout, asking people to repeat themselves, or to adjust their mic/headphones

1:14 PM

Oh and I've attempted some kludgy desktop programs.

But when I vetted a few of them more recently, I never got past the extra workload it'd add at the front of every session, so I never actually gave them a shot.

@GMNoob That sounds familiar.

@BESW Is the extra work at the begining of each session, or just at the begining of the campaign/ module?

@GMNoob Each session I'd have to go in with the maps and NPCs prepped and inserted into the system.

It's not saved between sessions?

Well, sure, you can do that. For the stuff that carries over.

But in the average dungeon you need to have a new map for every room, and new monsters to occupy that room.

And I never ran games where I could be sure what my players would do four weeks in advance --heck, most sessions I couldn't be positive what they'd get up to that session-- so prepping a whole adventure ahead of time usually wound up being a lot of wasted work.

1:20 PM

@BESW Yeah, the life of a DM :P

The more controlled your adventures (some would say railroaded), I suspect the more a virtual tabletop will be useful.

It would be really nice, if all these old campaigns had VTT resources available for them.

@BESW My group thought the opposite. The more railroaded, the less need for maps and funky tools :)

From a GM prep perspective, I mean.

A railroaded adventure is basically a series of setpieces, which you can prep in advance.

A more freeform story structure requires waiting while the GM draws maps he didn't expect to need, and that's extra time-consuming when you have a virtual tabletop map interface to deal with.

Though, if you're good enough at improvisation, you can keep your players on the railroad without them ever knowing it! :D Or just go the "Dragon Age 2" route and use whatever maps you have pre-planned, no matter which path they take (which is really my only main complaint with that game).

That'd still be a controlled adventure without a freeform structure.

1:25 PM

Interesting, I was planning on doing a sandbox, and just making all the maps that exist

@GMNoob Might work. If your VTT can handle it, and you have the time to do it all before the campaign starts.

Thinking that it's easier to pull up a file from a computer, than it is to shuffle through papers :)

Is Roll20 the default table to use?

It seems to be among the most popular.

But it needs a subscription for full functionality, which turned me off it.

I used OpenRPG back in the day.

Hmm, it says on the website it's completley free, and you only have to pay for extra storage

Yeah... I can't remember exactly what it was, but the FTP services lacked something I felt was pretty rudimentary to my play needs.

...I just got a secret hat, but I'm not sure why.

1:35 PM

December goodies

I must say, it seems like if you can pull this off, it's worth it.

app.roll20.net/forum/post/519015/…

Metool

Whoops.

This is really clever too.... app.roll20.net/account/supporter/…

@GMNoob That link dead-ends to a sign-in page.

@BESW It's a bar on their subscribe page

it's divided into 3 parts. It says "This many subscribers allows us to keep Roll20 open", "This many subscribers allows us to work on this in our spare time", and "this many subscribers will allow us to do this full time, adding more features more quickly"

And the bar is marked a little less than half way in the middle section

So the message I'm getting from this conversation, is that if you have the time and effort, and it works, then it works. Otherwise, it's best to stick to what works.

1:51 PM

And the more people you've got, the more it's a coordination nightmare.

And if I'm going to play with it, I should enjoy doing the set up, even if it's only for my own enjoyment

...Yes.

And expect to spend a lot of time squinting at map elements.

We have a small group

5 people total

hard part is having both me and my wife online at the same time.

I hear ya.

Kethryweryn

2:05 PM

Hello there.

Metool

Ey.

Hafa adai.

Kethryweryn

What language is that ? ^^

Ok. Thanks google.

So, half a day to you too. :D

heh

[sigh] I guess I understand why people perpetuate that pronunciation.

It's more like "Hoffa day."

Where I more inclined to conspiracy theories, I'd suspect a concerted plan to make sure non-locals give themselves away even faster than they would anyway.

Given that Chamorro has three whole letters than non-locals can spend decades failing to learn how to pronounce, misleading them on how to pronounce one of the most common phrases that the Western tongue can easily master seems like overkill.

Which makes me suspect that the "half a day" pronunciation originated from a Westerner rather than a local authority in the first place, and everyone's just been too polite to correct 'em.

2:18 PM

So I'm trying to get used to Roll20 again (apparently I tried to make a campaign last year) but the site doesn't work for me, get a 503 error... a great omen

Loverly.

I must admit I've always been a fan of using the minimum bells and whistles necessary for a game without compromising its fun.

just my luck... status.roll20.net

@JonathanHobbs, I edited out the god's holding spells for 4e clerics, does the new version pass 4e muster? — Pulsehead 27 mins ago

@Pulsehead: Gods in 4e are generally hands-off, because there's no specific rules talking about how they're hands-on.

However, the DM still can use the gods as, well, their deus ex machina. The gods can act, they just generally, by replaceable lore, don't tend to act in overt ways.

(It is probably worth keeping it that way, and would be heavy-handed to get the gods involved in stuff that is very much beneath their level of concern. One person going AWOL is not up there.)

There is one bit of 4e lore you'll find useful though:

Clerics and Paladins who turn on their principles are not without threat of punishment for it. In all likelihood, they were initiated into an order, and their order may take issue with their actions.

That or someone else of faith or his faith might.

@BESW Do you have any input on that?

I'm inclined to just edit his paragraph myself.

I would tend to favour the light-handed approach of, well, things-that-be keeping an eye on him (like his order), and only taking action once things appear to be out of hand.

@BESW You could :O

I'm not sure what I'd edit it to say, myself

2:34 PM

> In older versions if he breaks alignment and feels no regret, his god would just express displeasure by denying some/all spells for a few days. 4e, however, doesn't penalize interesting character arcs by withholding mechanics. Once a character is granted divine power, the god cannot withdraw it.

> This doesn't mean the gods are without teeth, though. Since the disobedience is narrative rather than mechanical, the response should be the same: Maybe first just troubling dreams, but then censure by other members of his order, ranging from disapproval and the witholding of favors to being outright hunted down by vengeful priests of the god he's betrayed.

@JonathanHobbs How's that?

@Pulsehead [wave]

@BESW Yes ;D

I like it.

Pulsehead

2:46 PM

There's a big difference between Father George falling from the path, and the Pope Francis (to use a real world example). The question makes no reference to level so if they are pretty-low level, then yes a stern talking to from a higher-up, or troubling dreams for a few nights that mysteriously disappear after removing the cloak (for 24 hours?) would be the way to go.

However, if the PC was high enough level (10 in 2e, about 10-15 depending on worlds in 3e, 20 in 4e?) then they are much more visible to the flock and the younger priests and a stronger punishment would be needed

but I can also see the argument that DMs should probably keep the punishment narrative

Aye. A lot depends on circumstance, and the god in question.

But 4e is very firm that the mechanics fundamental to a character's function should not be withheld under any circumstance.

If I wanted to be direct and penalizing about it, I'd impose a disease on the character.

But in 4e the gods are much more likely to use their mortal agents to enact their will.

Divine assassins, perhaps.

Is using mortal agents that the player can't escape, really better than just using "divine fiat"?

I have no idea because I have no context.

Generally speaking, I'd use mortal agents of the god rather than direct divine intervention.

there, I changed my question.

Well then, no, that's a stupid idea. The point should not be the terminate the character, the point should be to further the character's story.

LitheOhm

2:53 PM

hats!

In the case of disobedience to one's deity, my default reaction would be the dispatch of mortal agents in some capacity.

Ok, then... Is using mortal agents that the player can escape, really better than using direct divine intervention that the player can escape?