@AlexP its hard for players to predict long-term consequences of their actions because they a) don't have full information; b) think differently from GM; c) focus on their actions, not the world around them. More here.
But this somewhat fades when you consider long-term consequences from the point of view of GM. It's GM's job to make PCs lives interesting. As we search for those plot lines that would tie things together and bring about said interesting lives, we often look to what had happened before. Things that weren't meaningful then suddenly gain meaning. Offhand comments you made to an un-important NPC suddenly are crucial once GM decides said NPC is a spy.
It's not a competition you can win, because it shouldn't be a competition. Certainly, constant failure as result of unintended consequences is frustrating, but I'd say it's more the result of GM's miscalculation than yours.
Though given the unusualness of @Zachiel's game, that doesn't apply as much.
@BESW True. Though this only becomes apparent and a problem if the GM is being inconsistent as well. Consider games like AW where mechanics are straightforward and unambiguous, yet interpretation of results is what actually matters. It's on the GM to be fair.
But there are plenty of groups who don't feel like they should have to rely on the GM's dedication to fairness in order for their actions to have meaning.
(Ultimately, games with GMs do have that element no matter how hard we try to exorcise it, but it can be mitigated or covered up to varying degrees.)
If the players' ability to contribute to the game hinges solely on my not letting a mood get the best of me, it's understandable that I'd turn to the rules as a buffer between my bad day and a party wipe.
@BESW thank you. I've read your welcome messages many times across many, many newbie answers. I'd never thought that I'd get one for me too! (I'm a quite long time lurker of rpg.SE ;) ) — STT LCU34 secs ago
Morning all! Is there a canonical question about getting some players out of roll-playing and into role-playing? For example techniques like a table of tics/habits/phobias for a player to roll for one? I know Paranoia has rewards for RPing this, but want to fit it into a Pathfinder one-shot.
It's the "We Be Goblins", so the tongue will be firmly in the cheek, so something silly like this will work well IMO TBH LOL OMG ETC
The context for this question is the same as this related question about spending time in town, but I am looking for sufficiently different advice so I thought it warranted its own question.
I've been with the group for 15 years. We enjoy roleplaying but have a hard time finding opportunities to...
Right now, the group that I GM for is very, very tactical combat focused. To some extent we may as well be playing a dungeon crawl boardgame for all the role-play we manage.
Now, in itself that's not bad, and I enjoy progressing the story that we're telling, but I would like more "theatre of the...
Thank you BESW, heroic as always. I hope they weren't embarrassingly easy to find. I knew there'd be at least one that I'd end up duping if I asked fresh.
There are a lot tables of character qualities you could use, but they're unreliable as a source of role-playing inspiration. Totally depends on the person using them.
Myself, I've found that such tables tend to force the character into a very small space. But if a player is having trouble with giving the PC any RP presence at all, this can be a place to start.
@StuperUser My search was roll role play is:question. Only got one page of results, the two relephant ones were toward the top.
@StuperUser I'd advise against forcing them into it...
If the traits don't have mechanical impact, leave them optional. But keep the table printout close at hand and visible, in case someone gets interested mid-game.
@BESW Yeah, I was thinking it might push them further out. In your experience, does leaving the traits tables available, so they can roll up a trait, should they want to at any time, work?
@StuperUser In my experience, the best way to encourage RPing is to model it.
A GM can do this to a certain extent through NPCs (in combat as well as out of it), but I've also had success with inviting a player with compelling RP skills to join the group.
@MadTux another thing you should know: if @BESW ever achieves total dominance of the starred comments sidebar, he'll ascend to deityhood and consume us all with glorious fire in the process.
I was actually thinking that I was going heavy on the starring. Now, I want to star Problematic's message, but I might accidentally star your quote and complete the circle.
Don't be sorry about the broadness of your question; the site's inability to accommodate certain kinds of question doesn't necessarily reflect poorly on the question.
@Shaamaan Although many RPG systems come with a setting attached, many do not. Would you be interested in a system that lets the group choose/design the setting instead of providing one?
(I know you said that a more generic setting is preferred, but I'm talking about "no setting except what you make.")
@BESW Hey there! I don't mind a more specific setting, but then I'd rather hear it from my friends. I think I, as a potential DM, can work around in any setting (to a greater or lesser degree) - but I don't want to throw a bunch of story books at my players telling them "this is the backstory, now do your homerwork". ;)
Fate gives a lot of agency to the players, letting them create parts of the story, setting, and NPCs as they play.
So the story unfolds as you play, taking unexpected twists and turns because everyone's part of telling it as it happens.
Groups that want to set up a story in advance and follow it will find this awfully frustrating, but groups that prefer to create characters and situations and see what happens with them will probably enjoy Fate.
I think this might be a double-edged sword, actually. Don't get me wrong, it sounds awesome, and I'll definitely suggest it, but I know from experience that there were times where I was more than happy to be a part of a story carefully crafted by the DM. That, and I can't help but fear it might become a slight bit chaotic, no?
At the start of the game, everyone sits down and determines the kind of game it is: what issues/conflicts is the setting facing, some of the major NPCs and places, that kind of thing.
After that, influencing the narrative beyond the normal "what my character does" takes two major forms.
First, you can spend game currency to declare things to be true. Game currency (Fate points) is earned when things get complicated for your character, and can be spent for bonuses and benefits.
So I could spend a Fate point to have someone show up at just the right time, for example. The group decides if it's a reasonable thing, and there's an expectation of discussion.
OK, so that should solve the possible problem of "I declare that money starts falling from the sky". Or... should. Unless the whole group would want that. >_>
(The GM can also offer Fate points for not having the thing happen, even if the group decides it would be reasonable.)
With skills, I could roll Perception to have my character "notice" something about the scene that hadn't been defined yet.
Or I could roll Lore to "remember" something I read in an arcane tome once, etc.
The GM determines the difficulty of the roll based on how interesting the addition would be, and whether I'm thinking about the whole group or just myself.
The group together is expected to consult about many of the things that a D&D game would expect the GM to decide; the GM is "first among equals" rather than "in charge."
(By the way, the Fate pdfs are Pay-What-You-Like to download, including free.)
The whole thing sounds great, but I can't shake the feeling it could go either way. I'll definitely need to talk this over - you're right in saying that this is a different approach to standard role-playing.
Generally, the limiting factors on what's reasonable are that every major element of the story (characters, places, etc) have "aspects:" short pithy phrases describing something about them.
And a suggestion or idea is a lot more likely to be allowed if it's justified by an existing aspect.
@Shaamaan Aye. It expects the players to have a measure of self-control, maturity, and cooperation which some other systems... don't.
I don't think my friends are immature or lack cooperation, but they might approach the game as if it were a regular RPG, and end up either not contributing (which would make the whole thing stale) or each person contributing conflicting ideas (which might be difficult to resolve in a small group).
Groups who like GM-vs-player dynamics won't enjoy Fate. Again, not a value judgement about the gamestyles, just--Fate is its own thing and doesn't try to please everybody.
@Shaamaan Communication is vital.
Even if you don't think you'll use Fate, I strongly urge you to consider using the Same Page Tool.
It looks like a survey, but it's actually a group unity tool.
Everyone (players and GM are equally members of the group) gets together with one printout of the Same Page Tool questions, and through discussion you arrive at a single set of answers which describe the kind of game you'd all be happy in.
Then you can find systems, strategies, and techniques to achieve that, and it'll be more obvious if a given system --like Fate or Feng Shui-- will work for you.
(And it's generally a good idea not to show people the Same Page Tool before the group gets together to work on it; reading the questions on one's own tends to lead to a person choosing answers that he'll want to stick with, when he'd be more flexible if he first sees them with the group.)
And whatever system you choose, do your best to keep communication open and healthy between group members, or assumptions and miscommunications will fester.
BTW, Fate can be run with less player input and more GM control.
It's not intended that way, but I've seen it done and it works.
(It wasn't on purpose; when a group of people from more traditional gaming backgrounds first plays Fate, they frequently just kind of... forget... about some of Fate's more unusual features.)
I just realized... FATE might have one more good thing going for it... ironically, not connected with anything else - I'm from Poland and some of my friends know only very basic English. The need to translate a complex system + setting might be a real hassle.
If I'm getting this right (forgive me, at this exact moment I don't have too much time to research everything properly), FATE is just a system, without any world laid on top of it - this means it ought to be easy to convey the ideas and get things going.
The first part of a Fate Core game is having the group decide the setting.
Any kind of story about dramatic, proactive, and competent characters can be told by Fate, so long as you want the story to feel authentic as a story rather than feeling realistic.
That is, instead of winning a showdown because you have a better gun or are faster on the draw, you might win because you're getting revenge for the little orphan girl.
Hmm. Somebody on this site was planning to translate Fate into Polish, but I haven't seen him around for a while.
Fate takes 25-75 pages to explain, depending on how much complexity you get into. The Fate Core book is much bigger because it talks about a lot of options and philosophy; a lot of the "why" as well as the "what and how."
I don't need the translation myself. It's just that, in a game like D&D, for example, where there are lots of specific skills and spells, you NEED to use the same language.
One new player didn't really know the language all too well... and all of our character sheets and ability cards were taken from online resources in English.
Fate doesn't have a spell system or anything like that; if you want one, you make one--and each player can do it for their own character just as easily as the group can make one for the whole campaign.
It's as simple (the four basic actions are Attack, Defend, Overcome, Create Advantage) or complex (I can always Defend with Lore, or something much more complicated) as the player likes.
@LitheOhm Oh, knee-jerk response. Fate doesn't have any particular rules intended for dragon companions, but it does have a number of options to model them at varying levels of complexity.
Mmm. The battery needs replacing, the laptop's power cord is getting spotty, and it just spent half an hour not working at all... except that it was charging the laptop's metal body.
I supposedly support time machine but aside from resetting server passwords for it I have no interaction with it (but Im fairly certain that its set for daily backups on our server)
I'm writing a campaign for 3.5 at the moment and, as a new DM, it's been hard for me to decide what I need to write now, and what I'll need to write later. Because it's going to be my first campaign and I'm not sure what will be important when the first game comes around, I've been starting to pl...
@Magician It does not apply. My biggest problems has not been during adventuring but while relationing to other PCs. Like "you did -that-, how can my character think he'd ever talk to you again?". In a small gaming group, well, I'd tell them "don't be a ****, have your character behave so that we don't have to split the party" - but we have no party here.
[continued] If you make a social mistake it's now part of the game and you still get plenty of people you can play with. If I wanted to play with that particular one, well, that'd be stalking right?
@mxyzplk I've seen you defining campaign chronicle and actual play as tag synonims. Was there some discussion on that matter? Because I think that, while both fall in the same "chronicle" category, they're way different and I wanted to hear your opinion.
I think questions about where to find a collection of APs for some game is a really good AP question. Asking where to find campaign chronicles is way less probable
Yes, but. I come from a forum experience where, when asked about APs, people provided the chronicle of in-game events, which was unsuccessful in telling us where the game was giving those guys problems. Hence I'm heavily biased towards not grouping them under a single label.
I'm perfectly aware it's a bias and it's due to my experience
@Zachiel experience counts. It's how we level. That said, I'd prefer to see if the same problem develops here. Remember that tags only set context and you still get a whole question to describe the problem your trying to solve. We don't even have a real test of whether it's a problem here yet and I'd support seeing if one develops.
I recently retagged this question from system-agnostic to podcast because I was trying to reduce the number of questions that had the system-agnostic tag and nothing else and podcast was obviously clearly related even if it didn't seem directly applicable (the question specifies written transcrip...
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What's the community's procedure for suggestions additions or modifications to the feeds?
@Zachiel No discussion was had. Don't think they are different enough to merit different tags but you're welcome to start a meta question to establish that.
Oh, I guess looking back discussion was had, I added them at @BESW's request (he asked for story hour, I added more while I was at it) per discussion in the meta question you linked
@Baka-Mastermind The Master of Nine is excellent – once you get in. The prerequisites are very steep with all those feats. That said, you can get in pretty neatly by being a bit careful: Unarmed Swordsage gives you Improved Unarmed Strike and makes Adaptive Style a feat you were going to take anyway. 1 level in Cleric, taking Darkness (or Shadow) and Time domains, gets you Blind-fight and Improved Initiative. That leaves only Dodge to take, and Desert Wind Dodge is at least a bit better.
I have searched, and found some similar questions, but not this exact one.
Is there a feat (or other way, I guess) to use Dex or Con instead of Str when making melee attacks? The only time I ever make a basic melee attack is an attack of opportunity, so I guess another way to fix this would be ...
I dont know how much of your or my help this guy will want Char Op wise since he disliked our suggstions on his last question that he plays a class race combo that works and then refluff it.
Im tempted to add monk to that list despite being able to make it work simply because powers have damage dice independent of your weapon and unarmed monk is not viable in 4e
the assassin is a striker who doesn't do damage. the witch is a controller who incentivizes just...moving away from her? The seeker...I haven't actually looked to hard at and the Ardent is scattered all over the map with it's powers
@JoshuaAslanSmith monks are weird. Pretty sure the PHB3 writers were high the entire time
Some information I've dug up that may help other people finding this question:
http://community.wizards.com/go/thread/view/75882/26404353/?liveView=0 - A thread on wizards.com forums optimizing this build. So not quite an answer either, but more useful information for anyone else looking to do ...
in the comments he was pretty direct about his thoughts on my polite suggestions to refluff existing builds rather than try to tease out a tortured hybrid class.
@JoshuaAslanSmith "I mean it specifically as an insult" isn't better, in this context.
Chat isn't a magic bubble. It's an extension of the rest of the community. I think it's a terrible idea to complain about other users this directly, here.
fair enough I was more exasperated by the approach he is taking to 4e which I have run into in many other places than him in particular. But the nature of 4e's design and play philosophy has been a contentious issue on rpg.se for awhile anyway.
@JoshuaAslanSmith I feel you. We all have our hair-tearing moments.
I feel like it takes a lot more work to ruin a 4e character than a 3e character (from the little I've really seen of 4e). You kinda have to go out of your way to do it.
But people trying to "play against type" still blunder into it on occasion.
@AlexP if you're playing a basic out of the box character, yes. this is true. This on the other hand looks like a deliberate attempt to make a garbage character
@waxeagle I do think you are right about PHB3, runepriest is such an overly complex character class and battlemind is probably the only strong class out of the whole book
@JoshuaAslanSmith psion has it's strong points..but in general psionic characters are just...odd. They have a different resource calculus which can be thrown off through an MC or bad PP choice.
I think a significant part of the issues with PHB3 though is that it's the first book where the design paradigm started to change.
until then we had consistent AEDU classes with no exceptions
psionics began to break that down (where's BESW to talk about introducing new subsystems). Now they are balanced against normal classes in a sense, but it's a new subsystem.
It's been suggested in the comments that I propose a process.
Here is a process. It is intentionally kinda informal.
We make a meta thread for it like the community ads.
People vote stuff up or down depending on whether they would like to see it in the chat feed.
Moderators use these ratings a...
Say, what is the first thing that comes to mind when you talk about Tome of Battle? Most likely, the maneuvers - the thing that made the close-quarter combat fun for even those players who don't like to just smash things with a metal stick 'till it breaks. These maneuvers are so awesome that a 1-...
Here is a list of the feeds that currently show up in RPG General Chat.
How are these feeds selected?
What's the community's procedure for suggestions additions or modifications to the feeds?
I have searched, and found some similar questions, but not this exact one.
Is there a feat (or other way, I guess) to use Dex or Con instead of Str when making melee attacks? The only time I ever make a basic melee attack is an attack of opportunity, so I guess another way to fix this would be ...
