TRPG General Chat - 2011-07-22

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8:52 AM

0

Q: Bennies for Long Sessions?

In Savage Worlds, Player Bennies refresh at the start of a new session. What is the best way to handle a long session? For example what if the session is all day or even all weekend?

0

Q: Group Stealth Rolls

The rules says that when a group is sneaking up to another group, both sides get a Group Roll. There are two sorts of group rolls. The NPCs one where you roll once with their skill die and treat the group as a wildcard, ie roll a wild die to take into account the group. The other player one (a co...

1 hour later…

10:10 AM

0

Q: Wait for The Void or get Chthonian Stars?

Has Wildfire's standalone version of Chthonian Stars (a Lovecraftian sourcebook for the Traveller system published by Mongoose) "The Void" been cancelled?

traveller the-void chthonian-stars

2 hours later…

12:12 PM

wonderful, questions!

indeed.

@CRoss its been a good couple of days for questions

one I could even answer (sort of)

9 in the last 24 hours alone...

@CRoss I saw that. is SW its own system or is it based on something else?

@waxeagle it's a system with flavors

... rather, it's a core system

It's cool, relatively low overhead, fast combat

@CRoss intriguing. I may have to check it out.

12:21 PM

Savage Worlds (Pinnacle Entertainment Group)

will check out later

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

whee.

@BrianBallsunStanton excitement, yes?

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

gods, teaching is such a rush

Even just bloody penny ante tutoring. Though I managed to convince myself to charge $50/hr for it.

and wow, to a new student the modern reference tools are OMGWTF powerful

@BrianBallsunStanton :) I like teaching. Although I have a hard time if folks aren't real quick

12:24 PM

@waxeagle It's very interesting

@BrianBallsunStanton yep

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

cause charging $50 gets rid of the wankers.

@CRoss Pretty easy to learn, too, if I am not mistaken? Especially when coming from a D&D background?

@GPierce oh, orders of magnitude easier than D&D

@CRoss I've read through the Explorerer's Guide (?) and I enjoyed the many takes on magic, for one.

*Explorer... Coffeee has not set in.

12:26 PM

@CRoss that makes it even more intriguing. I think my group was very engaged by the elegant simplicity of Dread last night

@waxeagle How'd it go?!

@GPierce Really Really well. We managed not to kill anyone until the final confrontation. the tower was incredibly rickety at that point and the action character decided you know what I'm gonna go down swinging and knocked the tower over to take out the werewolf

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

nice

it was amazing. Things were fairly normal around the table, talking chatting, trying to decide what to do. Until they decided what to do and I said, ok make a pull and everyone in the room stopped, even my wife and the other guy's wife who was there. They just stopped and watched

Sounds like fun

I assume y'all are playing again?

12:29 PM

@GPierce the natural build up of suspense is amazing.

@GPierce eventually. I am certain no one in the group will be able to think about Jenga the same way again

@waxeagle (Now try to incorporate good suspense into a D&D game and will be the best DM ever...)

@waxeagle it's not near as simple as Dread. :-)

@GPierce seriously. It would be interesting to play a game of D&D with a similar concept behind it just as a one off. Maybe make a pull tied to a bad d20 roll

@CRoss I'm sure not, but nothing is a simple as describing and action and a DM setting a pull value

@waxeagle I've played in creepy, but not actually suspenseful. :-/

@waxeagle I'm definitely going to have to check out Dread now

@GPierce its a lot of fun as a one off change of pace. We only have 3 players last night, it will be interesting to see what happens if/when we play with our full group of 5-6

@GPierce I will say that the questionnaire concept that they use for character creation would make for a great background sheet for a group of D&D characters. Probably with less leading questions

12:51 PM

I find this amusing sports.yahoo.com/mlb/blog/big_league_stew/post/…

@waxeagle I've seen a few good character creation questionnaires online that are system agnostic. I filled a 100 question one out on a lark and really enjoyed it. I felt it helped flesh out the personality of the character.

@GPierce Thats kind of what I feel with these. They are short, usually 13, 12 real question and then the name. Its enough to just set some general ideas about who your character is, how he feels, some strengths and some weaknesses...

@waxeagle I've also seen the flaw mechanic done well, and also be horribly abused too

@GPierce yeah, It doesn't have to be deep to me, just enough that it lets another character shine in a situation instead of one character taking center stage all the time. Or that it sets up an interesting plot. It cannot be all consuming, and it can't be the main focal point of a character

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

1:07 PM

blerg.

@waxeagle Exactly. In 3.X flaws could be chosen for your character (as many as you wanted) and you would accept a mechanical negative in exchange for an extra feat upon character creation. For example, you could take one called Shaky that gives you a -4 to hit with ranged weapons for an extra feat.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

Pierce, choose a second theme, and poke Sean into being more active :)

@BrianBallsunStanton That's how I feel, and I have coffee

@BrianBallsunStanton I'm studying for a test and he was at a bachelor party yesterday/last night.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

@GPierce ah :)

@GPierce sort of like the original Serenity RP did

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

1:09 PM

deeeetaaaails

I'll poke him into activity when we see Cap later today

not sure of the current Cortex system includes the major/minor flaws system, I have an old copy of the Serenity RP book but that was before it was called Cortex

(I'm excited about it.. but also wary)

@waxeagle Savage Worlds has something similar

1:29 PM

@BrianBallsunStanton @waxeagle I feel like we're getting the mechanics hammered out nicely

I also think the group xp/item pool feels more like Leverage (which I think BBS suggested?)

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

yeah

shade, vryloka, revnant... half shadow group 2!

@GPierce going half orc

good for a striker or a defender...

@waxeagle Cool :0

Interesting group being created, for sure

@GPierce no access to the compendium, and it was my second choice for my first race...

@GPierce indeed. No humans yet, that is interesting to me

1:43 PM

@waxeagle I actually kind of like that

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

maybe humans are a minority?

@BrianBallsunStanton good possibility, or the opressive upper class and the "alien" races are attempting to subvert it

@waxeagle the city is a mostly human one, ie authority figures are human

So, there is that

It's be really fun to come up with a campaign setting via wave. An in depth one at that.

@GPierce Thats good. My group might have to start using wave for stuff like this. I definitely want to try to this character creation method with them. I don't know how long until we start a new campaign though...

@waxeagle I think the char creation would be interesting and faster in person, too. I'm kind of curious about it, I like the group ownership aspect of it.

1:50 PM

@GPierce I would be in favor of doing it pass the paper style. Write down a race, pass to your left, write down a class, pass to your left write down another class. Pass write down a theme, pass write down another theme etc

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

yes

that would actually be kind of cool. Do it at the end of a session and then come back with one of the character built and printed

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

I'm tempted to switch to that method cause this random rolling stuff is for the birds.

and, as it's midnight.

g'night

@BrianBallsunStanton fine by me. See you in the morning :)

@BrianBallsunStanton Night man!

Alright, I need to get off of here and tend to feral kitty and finish studying. I took a D&D-nerd-out break for longer than intended

1:52 PM

@GPierce lol study hard :)

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

invited gamefiend to the wave to observe.

@BrianBallsunStanton fine by me

2:17 PM

@waxeagle kill meeeeee

@GPierce :) happily, just set you up a jenga tower and we can get right on it :)

@waxeagle Haha, IRL. I hate studying. I kick butt for like 15 minutes, knock a bunch of stuff out and then I just sit here, eyes glazing over as I read over andere Sprache ueber und ueber...

@GPierce I hated studying too. Thats why I became a CS major, less studying more coding

@waxeagle I just feel I know it, but I don't want to get another B. I got a B on my last exam and it still drives me insane. First B in-college for German.

as an aside: Athasian Minstrel would be perfect (free poison attack? awesome!)

@GPierce how does the dmg compare to the ex assassin's poison stuff?

I can't pull it up here..

2:24 PM

Wasteland nomad is fitting, too

"1 [WI damage plus 5 poison damage. Until the end of
your next turn, if the target willingly moves more than 2
squares or makes an attack, it then falls prone, and it is
immobilized until the end of its next turn."

@GPierce nasty, some of the status effects on the themes seem a bit harsh at L1. a lot of them force CA

@waxeagle True, they are also ENC and Dailies, too

I like the fluff for the Veiled Alliance and Templar quite a bit. If I ever played in Dark Sun, I'd be tempted to play a Sorcerer King Warlock

@GPierce true. And i guess most are 1W or a low implement dmg with a nasty effect which is typical of L1, L3 encounter.

*SK pact Warlock

@waxeagle Yeah, powerful but not ridiculous either. And they scale by level, too. So it remains a decently useful power

@GPierce playing a veiled alliance necro mage right now. haven't looked at templar much yet

@GPierce very true. Its awful nice to have an extra encounter for free

2:28 PM

Something about the VA fluff just reeks of evil to me.. Well, evil and corruption masked by a friendly face

@GPierce yeah, I was trying not to let on I was evil, but in this party its just not an issue...

@waxeagle I think it would be really interesting to start a game at level 0 with a 10 in 5 stats and an 8 in one with only the thematic powers. Go to like 500xp and just flesh out your BG a lot more.

Once you hit 500xp, level up to 1 and do your point buy, etc, and become a full-PC

@GPierce interesting. Would you give some kind of hit bonus with the theme powers to be able to actually kill things?

Hmm, good point

@GPierce other option is to just scale monster AC to around 12 or so then its not really a big deal not to have stats (weapon folks will hit half the time or so)

2:34 PM

Combat would have to be either super watered down or just minions... Of course you'd get your racial bonus to your stats.. so that'd give you a +1 at least

3.X had a level 0 option for this very thing, and it was pretty cool. You start off super weak, but you're not thrown up against anything crazy either.

@GPierce true, and the weapon profs of your class and stuff. so that allows you to have at most a +4 to hit with weapon attacks and +1 with implements. So if monster AC is 14 (L0 monsters) and Nads are about 11 then you are good

@waxeagle Well, you wouldn't have profs because you wouldn't have a class yet..

It'd mainly be relegated to pure mba and rba with the thematic power only...

@GPierce oh I see. so no class either? well then arm them with daggers, most everyone can wield a dagger...

Hmm. I might sit down and try to develop this mechanically as I think it could be a fun hour or two of background building.

and depending on theme its incredibly appropriate

if you start out highway robbers armed with daggers and other simple melee weapons or mild thematic powers, and then attracted enough attention to get the theives guild to train you. that would be pretty cool

2:37 PM

@waxeagle I also think it'd make you appreciate your theme bg a little more as you had only that to rely on for some time

@GPierce very true. This is a very interesting thought

@waxeagle Exactly what I'm thinking. It's almost purely for fluff, but it'd be cool to see that development instead of immediately starting off as a good (not excellent, but good) fighter, wizzy, rogue, etc.

@GPierce very true. The only issue I see. Is there has to be a significant time lapse between that first scene and the next one

You want to play a cleric? Start off as a hospitaler! Wizard? Wizard Apprentice or Order Adept

@waxeagle Yeah, but that could always be a hand-wave thing. Such as a classic cheesy training montage or just "accepted to guild, screen goes black, check back in a year later after minimal training and you are a real thief/rogue/whatever"

@GPierce right. it would be a bit hand wavy, but the development at the beginning is probably worth it

2:41 PM

@waxeagle that's kind of what I was thinking

its a cool concept and if you have the buy in from the group it would be a cool way to go

I think it'd be more immersive from the beginning than just starting off at level 1. granted, this isn't for everyone. But for a more BG-focused group? yeah, that'd rock

@GPierce yup

@GPierce probably not for my current group in its current form. We tend to be hack and slash more than anything.

It made dread and incredible change of pace.

@waxeagle Same, but I have RP asperations...

Hold on I don't have stats, or powers, I have to help tell the story? what?

2:43 PM

@waxeagle Hopefully that'll transfer to your regular game, too

Hmmm, I wonder how difficult it'd be to make a well-balanced theme..

@GPierce good question.

@waxeagle done in the Dragon-style as opposed to the DS-style. Dragon simplified it quite a bit..

What I would do if I was trying to construct one is look at all of them and assign points to the elements and then do a point buy system when you build the new one

I think the hardest part would be developing balanced utilities

but then again, a simple re-fluff or flavor of other utilities would be easy enough

@GPierce yeah, I haven't looked at them...

@GPierce way easier then desiging new ones.

@GPierce do you invent swordchucks or used the spiked chain :)

2:47 PM

Hmm, might not be as difficult as I was thinking. I might try to throw together a theme for fun later and see how it stacks. (I will be doing alot of re-fluff...)

@waxeagle Lol YES! I'm making a Fighter-from-8bit-theater theme

@GPierce :) swordchucks swordchucks swordchucks :)

speaking of which, i need to go read that all the way through, I quit a couple of years ago before he had finished...

Haha, alright man, I'm going to get ready for class and get there early to look over this stuff

@GPierce sounds like a plan...

@waxeagle I quit reading about 3 years ago. I need to go back and re-read the whole thing

do well

3:04 PM

hey @wax eagle, @GPierce

@DForck42 Good morning ser.

how'd your Dread game go?

@DForck42 very very well. Had my players on edge and hesitant to pull from about an hour in on. The story resolved nicely with one of the players sacrificing themselves to take out the werewolf.

Didn't hurt that the game started with 6 blocks pulled from the tower because we only had 3 players

@waxeagle nice, sounds like you all had a lot of fun

@DForck42 yup.

@kso83o good morning

3:08 PM

Hi

good mornig.

ning

@kso83o how is the physics world?

very abstract.

we need more easy one.

@kso83o lol SE always wants the experts though :). Are you interested in table top gaming at all?

oh sorry.

I like it.

i'm stoked for my second session of DFRPG sunday, kinda don't have an idea where it's going to go, i'm trying to get them to pick 1 of 3 directions

3:14 PM

@kso83o Naw, its cool, we talk about a wide range of topics here, so itas all cool

yes. thank you.

but I'm not good at English..

what are you doing now?

@kso83o I'm at work. We were just chatting about the game of Dread that I ran last night.

the table game?

@kso83o Yes. have you ever played Jenga?

Yes. I've played almost 1year ago.

Can we play in computer?

3:18 PM

@kso83o Dread takes a regular set of Jegna and builds a story around it. Each time a player wants to do something in the game they have to pull a block from the tower and place it on top. If the tower falls they die.

@kso83o Its not really suited to computer play, as the whole idea is the tower.

Yes.

I know.

In this country, table games are advanced.

In this country, table games are not advanced.

@DForck42 well, its typically bad to railroad your players, but sometimes especially if you are just starting out, it helps to have them go in a direction you are prepared for

@waxeagle: Thanks for your concern. bye~:D

1

Q: Earthquake spell on floating castle?

Does that affect the floor of the castle or just the ground where the castle is floating on? Does it depend on what the caster wants?, Does it depend on if the caster can/cannot see the "real ground"?

@waxeagle yeah, this is the only the second session. i am by no means trying to force them into going into a direction, i'm just giving them the options and hoping they bite at something.

3:30 PM

@DForck42 yeah. makes sense to me. I have no idea about DF's mechanics or anything and I have no experience running anything more technical than Dread so take anything you here from me with a huge grain of salt :)

@waxeagle ahh, ok. the problem with DFRPG that makes it a bit more unique is that the universe is built around fantasy AND hard boiled detective diction

fiction

@DForck42 ooh fun, like investigating fairy tales and the like? or trying to figure out who murdered the orc?

Or is it more Cthulu type stuff?

@waxeagle crimes, disappearances, weird happenings, monster attacks, etc.

@DForck42 what time period?

you can literally go from having a shootout with a gang to having a fight with a troll, all while trying to find out where little Bobby Tables has disappeared to

2

@waxeagle modern

3:38 PM

@DForck42 nice

@DForck42 and +1 for xckd refs :)

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dresden_files#Graphic_novels the book series it based off of (i love it btw)

@waxeagle :-D

@DForck42 here have a bronze badge :)

but yeah, DFRPG is also VERY character centric, as is the whole FATE system

@DForck42 yeah I have noticed that from questions here on FATE games. its intriguing to say the least. I really need to branch out more

it's not a hard system per se, but going from dnd 4e to it was a little rough

3:44 PM

@DForck42 I'd imagine so. 4e is very mechanical, and depending on the group very RP ligth

to go from that to a more character driven system is a challenge.

@waxeagle yup. but we've made it, and we'll get more used to it as time goes by. the toughest parts are Aspects and figuring out how to fight

@DForck42 yeah the combat question that was on here (was that one yours?) looked like it was interesting to say the least. Looks like its an interesting resolution method

wow I'm beign redundant

and can't spell for crap today. screwed up the password on our DB 3 times in a row today...

@waxeagle heh, yeah that was mine. that was such an awesome answer that i got.

@waxeagle what kind of DB?

@DForck42 sqlserver 2008. backend for a corporate intranet.

@waxeagle cool. i've got everythign from sql server 2000 and 2008 r2 here :-D

3:55 PM

@DForck42 ick to multiple versions :). Thankfully we are a small company and my group only manages 3ish servers all with 2008

@waxeagle yeah, it's interesting. the 2000 server jsut hs 1 app on it and soon(ish) to be taken down. the 2005 server is in the same state. i've got 2008 servers that just need to be upgraded (probably will jsut bite the bullet when denali goes production), and then i've got a couple of new r2 servers

@DForck42 cool. We upgraded all of our hardware right after 2008 came out, we went ahead and just migrated over. Not much changed for us between 05 and 08, but we keep it pretty simple

@waxeagle my company's good at complicating simple

@DForck42 :). Too much fun. We will see what happens at my company, we just hired our first "IT director" ever to unify all of our IT department, it will be interesting what changes are afoot.

@waxeagle nice. good luck with that.

we recently got a director as well. he's trying but it's a sheer cliff for him

so what other rpg's have you played?

4:17 PM

@DForck42 just 4e and Dread. I want to branch into Paranoia at some point, but thats another system thats good for a one off or short campaign

@DForck42 just cleaning up our network situation will take our new guy a year at least I think. It will be a while before we get much of his attention I think

1

Q: What is a good set up for playing?

What setups have people found that make playing table top RPG's easier? IE, what have you done to your gaming environment to make things more comfortable and to help players get into the game? How did you make it easier for people to reach the board (if you're using miniatures. etc.). What asp...

gm-techniques environment

5:00 PM

Stack Overflow Blog: Good Subjective, Bad Subjective

Posted by Robert Cartaino on September 29th, 2010

Stack Exchange is about questions with objective, factual answers. We’ve been crystal clear about this for as long as I can remember, even back to the earliest, pre-beta days of Stack Overflow. It’s right there in the standard Stack Exchange FAQ:

What kind of questions should I not ask here?

Avoid asking questions that are subjective, argumentative, or require extended discussion. This is not a discussion board, this is a place for questions that can be answered!

Thus, questions that are not answerable — discussions, debates, opinions — should be closed as subjective. It seems simple enough: Fact good; opinion and discussion bad. But why? …

I went back and read this and I still think rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/9103/… is borderline

5:16 PM

0

Q: Phisics on an RPG - Water and electricity spells.

How do you deal with physics in an RPG? I like to master (and play) in a world I can believe (even fantastic ones). This question comes from D&D3.5 but applies to every game where reality collides with things you can't (usually xD) do. From Earthquake spell on floating castle? I took that id...

system-agnostic game-design

2 hours later…

6:51 PM

@DForck42 - there is a good question in there on your set up question. If you rephrase it and edit it a bit there was value there. However, I think it has the be refined to address specific table problems (unengaged players, improper ambiance, too much distraction etc).

7:17 PM

@waxeagle yeah i know, i'd like to just delete that one and then reqrite it when i can write a more thought out question.

@DForck42 sounds like a reasonable plan to me.

I was rather on the fence about it...but it was really broad

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