Okay, so I have to share this: I started a one-on-one Storium game for an old friend a couple weeks ago and he finally made his first move. We're using the Urban Fantasy setting and I had him start by discovering a chained-up vampire. All the Urban Fantasy cards treat this like some bizarre, unique occurrence, almost unthinkable, which could shake the city to its foundations.
So for his first move?
> James looks through the door. > “Oh, crap. Another one.” > He shuts the iron door, softly, but it squeaks on its rusted hinges. The vampire knows he’s there; through the door, James hears a rattling gasp—“Help. Me. Ugh.” > “Crap! Crap AND crap,” James whispers in a hiss. “This is the fourth one tonight.”
I'm so happy that I've discovered systems--Storium, Fate, etc--which encourage players to grab the narrative and push it in directions I'd never have imagined.
I have had a thought about an mini-adventure I am going to run.
The action-y bits will be set in a manor house, which I have drawn up on my VTT.
It had occurred to me that I could run the entire house part in Combat Time and allow all of the adversaries the ability to do their thing behind the Fog of War each round.
Are there opinions from the peanut gallery on this endeavor?
My first reaction is that it sounds like the players will be twiddling their thumbs a long time every round while you do Things They Cannot Know About.
This occurred to me; however, I think for reasons of not immediately murderizing them, I think most of the NPCs will not be moving around much when not actively engaged.
You can get the same effect by narrating the sounds of people moving and coughing in nearby rooms, the flicker of a muted TV coming from the guard station, a door they'd left open is closed when they pass by again, and so forth.
GMing is an interesting middle ground nestled snugly between the Okapi and the Okapi's Butt: you don't want to make work for yourself that won't pay off because you need to focus your attention and energy on the okapis that the party can see all of, but you can't rely wholly on okapi butts because the party could at any point go peek behind the bush.
I started out making whole okapis for everything in my worlds that might possibly be encountered by the PCs. It didn't lead to GM burnout only because my players quickly showed me the foolishness of assuming I knew what they might possibly encounter.
These days I have a wide assortment of okapi butt cutouts, with several post-it notes attached to the back of each cutout suggesting what the rest of the okapi might look like.
That's the approach I suggest you take here. You don't need to know exactly when the guard patrols the hall until it's relephant, so just have him cough every now and then and swing his flashlight around when the party's in a position to notice but not be caught by it.
I find them fascinating. But they are just about the least-engaged part of the world, and so every once in a while I put a bunch of effort into them and then realize it was gigantically useless.
If/when they start focusing on the guard, then you can decide it takes fifteen minutes to do his patrol but he takes a five-minute bathroom break at 3:42.
(And hey, look, it's 3:37 now. What a coincidence.)
Although some groups [tips hat to @GMNoob] prefer to feel that a setting has solid and unyielding inertia--that is, its nature and existence isn't modified by the fact of their presence but only by the actions they take--I find it makes for better stories of the type I like to tell if the guard's bathroom break is determined to be "when it's most interesting for the narrative," decided at the time we need it to be interesting, instead of being predetermined and then turn out to be an hour prior.
At least one of my players [waves to @trogdor] seems to prefer that I have something planned in terms of setting and plot, perhaps because he likes the sense of accomplishment in uncovering and exploring them.
I think certainly the point of first infiltration would be one of those conveniently-timed things, but once you're inside, it seems to me that the characters should have to bob and weave through what's going on.
I think that's kind of what I'm aiming for actually.
@Grubermensch I'd probably ad-hoc all obstacles to be conveniently inconvenient the first time they're encountered, but then once they're known they can be predicted and exploited/avoided.
BTW, if anyone other than Trogdor is interested, I'm doing some sketchy planning for a Cthulhu Dark adventure inspired by an old Doctor Who story, over in the Spoil-Lair.
@Grubermensch Then... well, there's lots of ways to do that.
I don't know 5e well enough to say what works best for it, but I've had success in other systems with either not allowing rest until certain objectives are achieved, or in randomly determining if rest is interrupted.
Hmmm. Also consider a countdown timer of some sort.
Not an actual clock-based one, either in game or out, but a representation of opportunities slipping away or some doom approaching.
@BESW This is definitely more of a not-allowing rest type situation, given that once they go in, it's only a matter of time before their presence is known.
For example, in one of my later and more experimental 4e sessions I put a bowl of candy on the table. The bowl was labelled DOOM.
Anyone was free to eat from the bowl.
You could also take a candy from the bowl to get small mechanical bonuses, like a re-roll, and in certain hard fights the candy could do extra-special stuff.
@BESW Possibly! I think they're just named after a guy, but he could've been named after the rating system, in a wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey kind of way.
@BESW The way I would play that situation, is that the players say that they want to wait for an opening, and we roll a 1d4 to figure out how many hours passed until they found it
At the same time I want the players to consider the frustration of the characters when something takes long, but I don't want the players to actually become frustrated themselves.
Aye. I've played it like that, and it worked, but these days and with this group the extra die-rolling and in-character thumb-twiddling creates pacing problems at the table, decreasing investment and interest.
The increased sense of "realism" and "living world" hasn't been valuable enough to my group that it's worth the tradeoff.
Yeah, I'd want a way to make spending time costly without making it frustrating. For example I think the most entertaining DnD 4e we've had featured a "time limit" where the party had to complete five encounters in a row, ranging from easy to fairly hard, without long rest in between.
@JoshuaAslanSmith Other than the fact that the basic rules lists 5, and they have made lots of comments on it, I think it's a good idea. Might increase search results :)
I guess the best way to make the players "feel" the time in the game is encouraging a sense of urgency. Have the bikers leave the town and warn them that "they'll be back tomorrow with their friends".
@kviiri Personally, if they are taking too many rests (they normally don't) I just say things like, "After spending 3 years waiting for the cows to come home, your beards grow grey and you talk of the days when you were my age." i.e. I used sarcastic comments and they get the point, laught and say "right, let's stop wasting time"
I thought per-session powers were a brilliant solution to the problem when I first ran across them in games like Fate, but that crashed and burned as soon as I realised they're balanced on an unstated session length which doesn't seem to match mine at all.
@kviiri If I remember correctly, that's why the random encounter table was created. One thing I like that they did in 5e was move the 5 minute rest to a 1 hour rest, so you could legitimately have random events break it up if needed.
@GMNoob I get that. I really value the living world ethos, but I accomplish it through character, atmosphere, and reactionary plots, rather than through pre-designed and/or randomised setting elements.
@BESW I don't see the problem with that. If that's how they want to run things, then why does the time have to be meaningful? Why even worry about if you rested 8 hours or 10 minutes? In many of the games we played we only cared about hp per battle, and so we upped the level of battles, so using a daily was needed.
That is, I only see time limit abilities as being cool for their evocotive nature.
@GMNoob In DnD? That's the least of my worries, hehe. Besides, that's just what I told them. I'm not really keeping very precise track of time - just enough to keep them on their toes.
First I'd rather trust that my players choose to rest when they actually need to, and talk with them out of game if it's getting ridiculous, rather than institute a mechanic which punish them in-game for behaviour the system requires them to take.
Second, my players' time is valuable. I feel that random encounters, by their very nature, trivialise the fact that my players carve out a lot of time every week to spend with me and my worlds, by asking them to spend time on what is, in the end, filler.
@kviiri Ah Ok. Cause that was one part of the rules that I always just skim over and dismiss. Who needs the headache of keeping track of time.
@BESW Interesting. when i was younger, setting up for camp was more of the suspensful moments of game play. We would make preparations for if we couldn't rest, and were very excited when the random encounters didn't arrive. Though I have noticed that the later modules don't have that experience so much anymore.
@GMNoob Again, I think this is part of the very fundamental difference between our play styles: my PCs are generally proactive, which is not something D&D does very well.
D&D generally assumes a reactive play stance: the GM presents a challenge for the players to overcome, and they do so, then await the next challenge. This is demonstrated in part by the downtime mechanics in many D&D games.
@BESW Modules are written that way, but the DMGs and rule books, are written telling how DMs to set challenges for what the players want to accomplish.
I'll have to find it, but I remember that the examples giving in the basic rules, and the downtime rules are written from the perspective of "A player wants to do X, this is how you challenge them in it."
@GMNoob D&D tries to accommodate all playstyles, and I'm not interested in a debate about whether it succeeds. The default approach for D&D (as defined by the kind of adventure its designers create for it) is that players are provided with challenges; and more significantly I started talking about these play stances in terms of the contrast between my stance and (as I understand it) your stance, so whether D&D does other things is quickly irrelephant.
@BESW I see... I just don't see it as something "D&D also does", I see it as the main part of the fun. I.e. If I only wanted to do the challenges that were presented to me, I'd play a computer game. One of the great parts of RPGs is as a player, telling the world what you want to try to accomplish and then having the challenges for doing so. That is, I don't see it as a difference in style of play. Both styles do that, they just do it differently.
(I'm trying to have an interesting conversation with you without devolving into yet another session of "getting told how I'm wrong every time I say something you disagree with," because many people in the chat are getting tired of that. You've got cool insight and a very different set of experiences which I'm eager to tap into, but I won't be lectured to on the wrongness of my games.)
As in, here is a module. And while playing hte module one of the players says, "Yes, this treasure will look great on the new headquarters we will build later." And you have instant new things to do.
Huh? I never said anything about the wrongness of your games...
@BESW Ah, then what did you mean about downtime stuff?
@kviiri Yeah funny thing happened with me on that the other day. The Dead in Thay module doesn't give any obvious rewards, and my players were like "So, um, why are we going to sacrifice ourselves to help save the Sword Coast? Do we get anything out of this at all? :P
@GMNoob Only because I've been keeping out of most of the conversations, so you may not know that you disparaged me and my players when you accused others of being deliberately disingenuous for misunderstanding you, or insulting their chosen games.
The most obvious kind of downtime is recovery: you play a short scene about taking time to deal with your sprained ankle/jitters/bruised ego/whatever, make a check (or have someone else make it for you, depending), and then it can start to recover.
That's pretty reactionary.
It's a bit more narratively engaging than D&D's rests usually are, but it's still "I stop to bind my foot."
Roughly, but not always. Downtime is what you do between the primary beats of the game, when there's not adrenaline and the stakes aren't as high--if there are any stakes at all.
For most games, the primary activity is interpersonal conflict, whether social, political, or physical.
Sometimes you also have conflict with the environment, but it's the same smell in the end.
Yes, exactly. Downtime is not-conflict, not-tension. Breathing.
D&D's weird because its recovery mechanics demand downtime, but for whatever reason it also provides random encounters to increase tension in the time for not-tension. That's bizarre to me.
@JonathanHobbs Right but it's downtime in 3e because it takes a week, not because he's writing in his spell book. A mage taking an hour to write in his spell book is generally thought as being part of the encounter. So the terms mean different things.
@GMNoob It's usually still a breather, a pause; you don't write in your spellbook when adrenaline is pumping.
Fate builds proactive downtime into its mechanics, though it doesn't always get used. DFRPG is especially good at placing proactive downtime front and center.
It does this because Fate--and especially DFRPG--rewards preparation.
@BESW Its something that has always been in the rules, but most tables and games have definitly ignored. when I was younger I used to laugh at all the rules written about gathering hirelings and building castles, thinking to myself "who wants to do that? go kill stuff!", but now that I'm older, I've learned that lots of people found the adventure to just be a means to building the castle.
@GMNoob yeah, like BESW pointed out. It's the stuff you're doing that generally involves just taking a break and doing nothing for a while. Resting, for instance. (I know you can do some stuff in resting, but in my experience groups have just tended to say "okay we rest for a few hours, then...")
Mages taking an hour to write in their spellbook may or may not really feel like downtime, but saying "we stick around for a whole week in town and get drunk and stuff whilst the wizard writes his spells" is almost certainly gonna feel like downtime.
A DFRPG wizard spends anywhere from minutes to years preparing to cast a spell, but the player can't simply say "a week passes and then I cast the spell." That week is spent making rolls and narrating how he gathers special materials, researches exactly the right place, practices the words, fasts and ritually cleanses himself.
@BESW Right, I''ve learned that it depends on the table. I met some people that are really into the "I can build a stronghold and craft wonderous items and become a famous local person."
Each of those elements of preparation is narrated as part of the story and its outcome determined mechanically, but in most cases it is not a time of breath-pumping adrenaline.
A wizard taking a few minutes to prep his finding-clues spell is a kind of proactive downtime for before the fit hits the shan.
Instead of restoring himself to his ordinary level of resources (as a D&D wizard does when he rests and prepares spells), a DFRPG wizard starts out with minimal power at his command and uses proactive downtime to temporarily access powers which he wouldn't be able to handle normally.
Similarly a Fate Core sniper takes several rounds to set up his shot, and a politician will spend the night before a debate going over his notes.
oh right. so that's where it's proactive vs reactive. D&D wizard: "the game has reached a condition and presented me with a need to do a thing, now I must do a thing." DFRPG wizard: "Today is a nice day. I'm going to do a thing."
BTW, @JonathanHobbs, I'm uploading some songs you might enjoy. Drop into Skype again some time and I'll tell you about it. (No rush, this'll take some time to upload.)
I believe I understand what you are saying now. I was just trying to clarify that in D&D, mainly because of the way some old style books were written, "downtime" is more defined by the amout of time spent than what you are doing. (Sorry for the long delay, guests came to the door)
@BESW That is one of the more interesting subtle changes in 5e. Now the Wizard has more spells than he can cast.
@Magician @Joshuaaslansmith I think you were commenting on the xp from levels 10-12.. Apparently it's by design. > Mike also comments on the way the XP table kinks at level 10. "Level 10 - 11 XP: It's by design. Data shows campaigns stop at 10, we're trying to speed up 10+ a bit so groups can reach 20 in a campaign. Part of thinking behind that is it looks like campaign length might be dictated by how long the group can consistently meet. Interestingly enough, groups seemed to want to level much faster than we expected, and campaigns were shorter than we expected, too."
There is a better picture elsewhere on the internet. But I like this version best. http://www.enworld.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=62043&d=1402006711&thumb=1
I am very much deterred from the wild magic feature, but that's mainly because I don't like random results tables like the one I saw. But I am interested to see how they handle a sorcerer when a wizard also has a form of spontaneous casting as their mainstay...
And there were some fancy useage of spell points. I didn't pay much attention to it because for a while they said that sorcerer was going to be a subclass of Mage.
@GMNoob So it sounds like they're trying something totally new with the sorcerers, rather than just make them be wizards who cast differently. I like the sound of this...
I should look up one day if anyone did a good WoT system of magic.
I like the idea of different amounts of the elements in different shapes creates new magical effects. But could never find a way to make it work nicely before it came down like a house of cards.
Saidin/saidar? Doesn't seem like it'd be an easy system to 'port into another engine; the implications and consequences of the two magics are simultaneously too lethal and too social.
For example one character had a particular knack for making things larger, and they used it to assassinate someone inside a building. A quick rifle shot aimed at the wall was transformed into cannonball-sized chunk that burst its way through the wall with ease.
It wasn't until I was able to cast four or six spells per round that I ran the risk of running out of mana--and then only if I stuck to higher-level spells.
If you want mix-and-match mechanics you're bound by a finite number of possibilities, so "something nobody ever did before" becomes vanishingly unlikely.
At some level the participants have to start innovating, if you want the game to contain truly new elements.
@BESW There are an infinite number of numbers between 1 and 2. There are ways to do these things, though I haven't seen it yet. Also, I meant in the game universe, not in all instances of the game.
@BESW If you take the element of air and the element of spirit and weave them together with 5 points, you are able to heal a minor wound. With 8 points a major wound. Then, one day you spend 15 points and after 10 points worth of wounds are healed, you try to come up with what the other 5 points healed and you "discover" that it also heals emotional wounds.
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Abstraction is the art of using the core elements of Sorcery to form new spells. This process allows a wizard to relatively quickly produce nearly any effect imaginable---so long as he is well versed in the fundaments of sorcery.
Based on the Wheel of Magic found in the Burning Wheel, this is a new, versatile and unpredictable addition to any Burning Wheel game. (The chapter includes a revised and updated Wheel of Magic, and expanded rules for Unwanted Summonings as well!)
Trying to figure out how a Headband of Vast Intelligence and Crimson Sphere Ioun Stone would interact with eachother. I figured out I don't think they stack.
I remembered reading somewhere that after wearing the headband for awhile it counted as a permanent bonus but I don't think that is the case I think I missread it.
@waxeagle Just make the Interior from stone as well XD Then all you have to do is transmute or something
Actually permanent prestidigitation would work I think. It can change the texture and feel of items right? Err this is 5e isn't it? Is prestidigitation still a thing in 5e?
Has anyone here ever played a modern era game where the players are playing themselves? So for example, you could be playing All Flesh Must be Eaten or even a World of Darkness game where the players have all been turned into vampires?
Specifically where the setting and the world the PCs are in is our own with the twist of the game and the PCs are based on the players playing them.
@waxeagle Hm, I guess it would work for non-RPers. I didn't think about that because I thought of playing yourself in a wildly different context is still roleplaying.
@DampeS8N definitely, and an experience RPer would have a lot of fun with that. But it's an easier role for a non-RPer to step into when they can think "what would I do in that situation" rather than "what would someone else do in it"
