TRPG General Chat - 2015-12-13

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12:03 AM

**Cool stuff:** [Bundle of Holding](http://bundleofholding.com "buy RPGs cheap in bulk, support charities & indie designers!");
[Mindjammer RPG](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/328469751/mindjammer-the-roleplaying-game "Transhuman Science-Fiction Roleplaying in the Universe of the Far Future!");
[RuneQuest Classic](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/224590870/runequest-classic-edition "Bringing the iconic RuneQuest 2nd edition rulebook back into print");
[Fantastic Locations](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1298145716/sly-flourishs-fantastic-locations "Fantastic locations to dro…

thanks @Miniman bye

@doppelgreener Thanks!

12:55 AM

hey again @nitsua60

1 hour later…

1:56 AM

Campaign hook!

Archaeologists have raced across China, Russia, Kazakhstan and Mongolia to excavate tombs before they could defrost http://nyti.ms/1NRxaHu

Tweeted by nytimesworld on December 11, 2015 at 9:43 AM

2:18 AM

Oh, man, how did I miss Aurion: Legacy of the Kori-Odan?

@Shalvenay hey--sorry to be so tardy

youngest took a bit getting to sleep

(mom's away for the weekend)

@nitsua60 np, no worries

over to r20?

Movie pitch: Wuthering Heist.

Tweeted by NowWeAreAllTom on December 10, 2015 at 6:11 PM

2:34 AM

@nitsua60 sure thing

3:00 AM

trying out "throwing sand" rules right now--room is called "the sandlot"

3:49 AM

151 rep until I can cast close/reopen votes!

if I knew anything about PF or 3.5 I'd go vote on some of your posts...

4:37 AM

hey @Pixie

@Shalvenay Hello.

how're things going?

Alright. How are you?

@Pixie OK here

been helping a fellow denizen of this Stack get used to online TRPG play

Oh, nice.

4:47 AM

@Pixie yes he's very kind, and very graciously adjusted to two RL developments

Glad you were able to work around 'em! RL is tricksy sometimes.

3 hours later…

7:50 AM

so quiet

well... since nobody is saying anything

anybody heard of D&D groups using a VR sandbox for maps:
https://youtu.be/YcwubfkPp6Qs

I'm almost about to try implementing this with my group

2 hours later…

AncientSwordRage

10:03 AM

@user507974 never heard of it

10:53 AM

@user507974 it seems kinda impractical for RPG-ing purposes

@doppelgreener In terms of setup?

or did you mean in utilty

in both

what would you argue are the main reasons that the second is the case

Any use of minis or other physical props interacting with the map is going to be destructive to the terrain, for starters.

its lightly destructive

10:56 AM

i can do absolutely anything i want on a piece of paper including far more complex stuff than sand will let me, i can put it away and take it back out, i can show you three of them at once, and i can edit all of them freely, and showing you them doesn't involve waiting five or ten minutes for me to play around in sand

if I want something extremely unusual and unique, then I can do that in 10 seconds on paper, but it'll take hours of art & programming effort in the VR setup

if I want vastly different environments or to break the usual rules or to put down a bridge and a river, that's a few seconds of drawing, but a whole new set of rules to build into your VR simulation

if my players decide mid-session they're going to the elemental plane of air, i draw it, rather than staring down at my sandbox in shock wondering how long it'll take me to make it support all of those floating (flat) islands.

In my practical experience, the more elaborate the physical props are the more the players are distracted by the gimmick and find it harder to focus on the characters.

its not like you cant ever draw

@BESW thats a pretty good point

When I was playing grid-and-minis games, I tried a lot of different methods.

The best setup I ever developed was a laminated 1'' grid and Crayola Window Markers, with Gnome Stew Print-and-Fold paper minis.

It had the right level of available complexity without enforced complexity.

My friend we play with has a big case of warhammer figures that we pull out of

I like the laminated sheet idea

@user507974 of course, but if i'm going to completely toss this thing aside in most situations, it's not really worth having. it's just a fancy toy, not practically useful and relevant.

11:02 AM

in a similar vein, what do you think of this though: projector over table and drawing map with graphics tablet

(I tried lots of other kinds of markers; window markers are both the easiest to wash off without smudging during play, AND have the most colours available.)

im going to have to have my laptop out anyways since thats kind of my main station for DMing

@user507974 that'd be neat, but it could run into some issues with the map being projected onto the players' models. maybe they can be blotted out by the system or something?

@user507974 It's a clever idea, and I've seriously considered it if I ever had the opportunity (before I moved away from games that'd need anything like that at all). However... it's adding another layer of interface between us and the story, for benefit that I don't think outweighs the imposition.

draw a black dot where they are maybe?

11:04 AM

And as always, anything like that is adding at least two layers of failure potential.

projector and tablet, for example

I much prefer simple, low-failure, high-mobility, high-adaptability props.

by props do you mean drawings/laminated sheet or something different

My D&D 4e GM kit was a binder, some index cards, a hand-held whiteboard with a bookend to prop it up and some magnets to stick on it, a can of pencils and markers and an eraser, a baggie of paper minis, and a rolled-up laminated grid.

(And of course the bag of dice.)

My GM kit now is a bag of dice, a bag of tokens, a stack of index cards, and a can of pencils and an eraser. If I'm feeling really fancy I'll have some printed sheets.

The fewer things we need to manipulate and keep track of and make sure are working properly and negotiate if they fail, the more we can focus on the game.

and speaking as someone who's used roll20, all that time fiddling with the tool to get things looking ok, takes up a lot of time overall and is a lot of mental effort i could do without being distracted by.

11:09 AM

Besides, I've never been able (or even willing) to assume that I'll be gaming in the same place every time. I need my stuff to be portable and simple.

(And cheap enough that I'm not crushed if it gets lost or broken.)

yea, digital rolling has been a bit of the pain in the ass when people in my group used it before

i am trying to keep 100% of my focus and effort upon the players and what matters to them, whatever tools i use better chip the least possible amount into that 100%. pencils and paper use very little compared to having to fiddle around with a computer projection system.

now i have this (getting pic)

i'm not referring to digital rolling, i mean the actual map-drawing and stuff, everything was way slower and trickier than just using a pen and paper

My current game is very complex for me. That's because half the players are Skyping in from another continent so I have to negotiate a computer, microphone, camera, and a shared Google Docs page.

11:10 AM

user image

oh, yea

If we didn't have those players, the only use I'd have for any electronics is a) reference to PDF manuals, and b) background music.

oh, anything about running music effectively, in terms of audio/speaker placement

@BESW and we very much appreciate y'all going through all that trouble for us

I have one stick in the mud friend who probably will complain about it the first time I get it wrong

No advice re: placement. Keep the sounds soft without a lot of sudden change in volume or style, avoid vocals, and avoid tracks the party will recognise.

You don't want people to ever feel like they have to raise their voices to be heard because of your ambience.

11:13 AM

All easy for me, I have 297GB of music, mostly soundtrack and from a lot of sources my friends wont know

because of that, I'd generally advise that you keep the speakers relatively distant from the table.

yea, I was thinking either that or under the table pointed downwards

Also, in my experience, it's easier to have the music change based on place or theme rather than events, just because you'll be switching it out less often.

mhm

(Again, don't let the music get in the way of the game, which means don't be fiddling with it a lot.)

11:15 AM

@user507974 that's going to make it muffled

Last time I did a big organised musical setup, I had playlists for factions and places and mixed them depending on which were appropriate for any given session.

kind of increases the harmonics to the bassier tones, which means player voices which are mids and trebble should stand out a bit better right

Tonight is mostly about the Lich King, and we're in the Feywild. [mixes two lists, hits play, forgets]

but yea, out of the way and pointed in a different direction

oh ok

that is pretty low maintenance

have you found a good way to do it over skype

or rather, over any online medium

...wait, the party planeshifted to the Underdark, but we're still focused on the Lich King. [switches out half the playlist]

Nope, haven't done a lot of experimenting. We have a hard enough time with bandwidth and clarity.

11:18 AM

also, electronic/synthesized music, are there types you found that actually dont break immersion

(One cool thing about faction motifs is that you can foreshadow things, like adding the Lich King mix to a session that seems to be all about the Samrajyan empire.)

heh

Depends entirely on the setting/mood/theme.

in the classical D&D settings for example

@BESW <- Our side of the Skype call (I and a friend are the ones playing over Skype with BESW) is currently having issues with our internet service and especially our router probably needing replacement, so yeah. Plus, one of the major issues we deal with in our Skype call is people getting heard - it's easy for anyone having a conversation on one side to drown out the other. No music wouldn't help.

11:20 AM

so you know, instrumentation wise it doesnt really match up, but have you found that it still works sometimes

@doppelgreener And my media PC's graphics card is dying, and it's One With The Motherboard, so that'll need to get replaced some time... like I have the time to do research to figure out what's best to buy.

integrated is always such a pain

Occasionally, yes.

i wish i could just strap my desktop to me like a backpack sometimes

D&D has a distinct magipunk subflavour which electronic and synth can mesh with well.

Also things like the Far Realm invite discordant choices.

11:24 AM

currently im sitting in a medieval and steampunk slash

somewhere way down the line my next campaign will be cyberpunk

And then there's fun stuff like At the Gala in C Minor.

I used Phillip Glass tracks for some settings.

...I also used tracks from The Batman vs Dracula.

that name rings a bell

...Alien, the Myst franchise...

yea

...Puritan-era American church choir music...

D&D is a mash of genres and cultures. Its music should be too.

11:28 AM

yea

since I have been kind of an unofficial producer to one of my friends animation projects for the last... 7 years wow... I kinda have developed a special markup in my library for all my music that has bgm potential

For the half-orc empire of Samrajya, I used mostly the Belgian group Die Anarchistische Abendunterhaltung and the Ecuadoran group Duchicela.

Im loving witcher ost too, lapping that right up

I've used the soundtrack from Tomb of the Cybermen to great effect in horror scenarios.

@BESW Very gripping! I like the alternate title of "At the Gala: The Guests are on Fire"

@doppelgreener There's an entire subgenre of Official FIM Soundtracks in Minor Chords.

11:33 AM

Beautiful 8)

lol

what do you think of ambience music

I've also used tracks from Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis.

@user507974 As opposed to...?

i meant ambiance as in kind of the genre

[shrug] Sure, it's fine. I don't seek it out much.

sometimes i really wish the requiem for a dream sting hadnt been used to death

11:36 AM

Heh.

I don't pay a lot of attention to genre, really.

i have so many nice tweaks on that

Genre is usually more a description of the kind of people who are expected to like a thing, than a description of the thing itself. Which is often useful, but not really helpful to me in finding music to play during my games.

oh, one of my favorite sources Ill want to pull from when im in the right areas with a zen vibe is mushishi

the music in that show is so atmospheric sometimes

And I haven't used music regularly in my games for about two years now.

Mushishi OST 1 - Yuukyuu

if youre online that makes sense

11:40 AM

We're basically linking my living room of players to Greener's living room of players through one Skype window.

oh ok, I was thinking it was a band of skype people joining in to a real room

interesting dynamic

Usually there's two folks on his end and two to four on my end.

mmm

does humor tend to be purely situational or does DM also have his own quips in there

or similarly, player performances

Yes.

^

user61230

11:49 AM

Side note: For those who are interested, New World of Darkness is being rebranded into Chronicles of Darkness.

3

sometimes our game will reach a point of such beautiful ridiculousness that we'll just break down laughing when someone draws attention to it

The nuclear goldfish was carefully anticipated and set up. The jokes about "hot guys" when Jessie hit on the lava elemental? Totally off the cuff.

@Emrakul (@AncientSwordRage there may be one other in this chat who's into WoD)

@doppelgreener ASR already knows.

@BESW Oh, the context was ASR wishing there were more people into WoD who were in chat

11:55 AM

time to cast sleep on myself guys

Goodnight!

fun talking to you guys

adios

ttfn

Take care :)

Ah.

user61230

12:07 PM

@doppelgreener @AncientSwordRage More of a curious enthusiast, to be honest, but I've read a bit?

AncientSwordRage

1:31 PM

@Emrakul are you sure about that?

Played any?

@AncientSwordRage How did it end up for the slasher merit character?

"Slasher Merit" would be a good name for the lead singer in a metal hair band.

**Cool RPG stuff:** [Bundle of Holding](http://bundleofholding.com "buy RPGs cheap in bulk, support charities & indie designers!");
[Mindjammer RPG](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/328469751/mindjammer-the-roleplaying-game "Transhuman Science-Fiction Roleplaying in the Universe of the Far Future!");
[RuneQuest Classic](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/224590870/runequest-classic-edition "Bringing the iconic RuneQuest 2nd edition rulebook back into print");
[Fantastic Locations](https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1298145716/sly-flourishs-fantastic-locations "Fantastic locations to…

AncientSwordRage

1:55 PM

@Ahriman Never made it to the games

Games got cancelled

Sad

I was wondering what you had used in the end

AncientSwordRage

@Ahriman is what normally happens when I try to Roleplay

that you're sad?

or that stuff gets cancelled?

You know how nearly every role playing book starts with a bit of fiction and an example of table chatter and mechanics? Do you know one that does both in one/in parallel, to show how the mechanics and table chatter give rise to the type of stories it wants to tell?

AncientSwordRage

@Ahriman that I don't make it to the games

@Anaphory I'm thinking WoD/CoD does in some places, but not the intro

Definitely happens in the GMC update about breaking points, again in mirrors about troupe play.

Can't think of any other Examples

2:03 PM

@AncientSwordRage Still interested in the character concept or not?

AncientSwordRage

@Ahriman I'll likely recycle it

I'll ponder it a bit then and give my two cents

2 hours later…

3:42 PM

oh, hey there @nitsua60

hey @Shalvenay. kids and I just spend an hour working on the white winter tutorial. Good times...

(warning: YT link)

heheh

well, I s/b on most of the day, so if sometime today works for picking up our game, that works too :)

s/b ?

snowbound?

superboreal?

should be :)

4:03 PM

afternoon's a little busy, but evening might hold some time

4:18 PM

@nitsua60 probably won't be available this evening -- got a 3.5e game scheduled

2 hours later…

AncientSwordRage

6:30 PM

@Ahriman currently making another hunter but this time our game is set in Victorian London

1 hour later…

user61230

7:34 PM

@AncientSwordRage I haven't actually had the chance to play it, unfortunately :/

9:22 PM

roll 1d4

10:17 PM

1d4

2

@Poutrathor (don't need "roll", just name the die/dice)

wb @nitsua60

hey @Shalvenay

just about to make dinner... burger night =)

@nitsua60 aah.

@nitsua60 did you have any other questions/comments re: the link I sent you the other day, btw?

AncientSwordRage

10:41 PM

@Emrakul I was like that for so long

11:06 PM

There are big ads for The Force Awakens on the sides of the buses here, but all I see is the animated version of that poster.

11:35 PM

hey guys, anyone know where i can get Pirate minis? I have purchased 28-30mm scale wargame minis for use in D&D before, usually they come in little frames and you gotta clip out the figures and assemble/paint/glue to bases etc.... I am not finding anything like this for pirates tho. Not sure if anyone has purchased a pirate army before?

I don't know anything about minis, but the miniatures tag might have some helpful entries, especially the closed "where do I find minis" questions.

@doppelgreener We've reached peak product crossover.

user61230

@AncientSwordRage Oh? Did you get a chance to play?

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