waves

oh /me works now

oh, i have a userscript that does that

time for work

ugh, that Baleful Polymorph question. I can't understand the RAW-by-the-letter mindset that can read the spell description, and not think "This is obviously an exception to the general rule, because it specifically says things happen that the general rule says doesn't"

Yeah that question was annoying

@Adeptus agreed.

What's the latest on system recommendation questions?

Nix, unless you can frame it as "I have X problem" rather than "I want X system."

@Magician Off-topic.

Ah well. Had a curiosity.

What's the curiosity?

Inspired by this conversion of Dark Souls monsters to D&D 5e.

Which seems to be well done (I haven't played either), but miss the point of Dark Souls.

That is, it translates the player skill of knowing when to dodge or attack a monster to character skill of rolling a save when attacked. There's no mastering those monsters.

Urf.

While the scene may well play out exactly the same in 5e as it did in Dark Souls, with characters ducking blows and going in and out of monster's reach to defeat them, it's all... just rolls.

Now I'm thinking about Umdaar's "Intelligent Weapon" stunt.

So the curiosity was, what system would accommodate the mastery feel. The duel-y nature of Dark Souls, as I understand it.

@Magician I'm not sure that concept can ever really work in D&D.

But it might work in, I dunno, Seven Seas. It's got duels, right?

@Magician No idea, I just felt like commenting.

I've heard that Riddle of Steel is designed by Renaissance combat re-creationists.

Dark Soul's version of mastery is: learn to recognise the monster's attacks, learn how to stay safe from them (and learn what to do when in order to do that, down to precise timing sometimes), learn when they're weak or vulnerable or open to your particular attacks. Learn good strategies, learn even better strategies. (Should you run away, or roll beneath their swing, or roll under their legs, and do you immediately need to do something else right after, and are they vulnerable after that?)

On a super abstract level: every time you roll to counter or avoid an attack or move, you get a cumulative +1 to future rolls against that attack or move.

Dark Souls also presents learning the game as an element of difficulty in and of itself, to the extent that actually reading the wiki articles makes the game enormously simpler. This hearkens back to old dungeon crawlers. You're presented with stuff, you're not told how to use it effectively, learning the very nature of the world and the stuff is intrinsic to the game's challenge.

There's lots of weaknesses and secrets and many things have a hidden nature you can exploit and you're never told about them and that's part of the point.

Which is why I'm thinking of a duel system. Something where you don't just "attack" the enemy. Where you both pick actions out of a list, with a rock-paper-scissors system.

@Magician ...-lizard-spock

A rock paper scissors system isn't dark souls, and acting ignorant of what the enemy is doing is antithetical to dark soul's mastery, if I understand correctly.

@Magician "This simple card-based duelling system can be grafted onto most rules-light RPG systems."

@Pixie This looks good for you.

Dark Souls lets me master a boss to the point that as long as I understand what it's doing, I can theoretically get past it without even a scratch. There's a boss called the Pursuer: the first few times I fought it, I was annihilated. I turned to my friend for help, and they showed me how they did it. After that I beat the Pursuer on my first attempt: I'd already mastered the concepts, just wasn't applying them quite right.

I think I got hit once in that fight and it was over in less than a minute.

This boss is from Dark Souls 2, where evasion works slightly differently to Dark Souls 1. That boss fight was where I learned part of that.

Having an enemy telegraph its moves, and me learning how to respond to those moves, is thus part of the mastery. Then, learning those moves, I still need to do them well, so doing it half-assed will still get me beaten.

@BESW Oh, I like this.

Makes me think of a deck-based fighting system. Knowing which actions/cards the enemy has helps tremendously. Each action has execution time (how much time passes between playing it and it happening), some leave you vulnerable for some time afterwards.

@Magician That sounds like a compelling path to go down.

@BESW I don't like his idea at the end, tossing out fate points for something that doesn't end up doing anything if you balance it,....

otherwise it looked kinda cool

Hmm.

Functionally, it's very similar to having Fate points except that you've got a reward as well as a consequence.

well no

it only does anything once all of them flip

that is part of the problem

Most of the time in Fate, you don't run out of Fate points: functionally the same as flipping the coins. If you do, I get to say that bad things happen without you being able to buy out of it: functionally the same as going all black.

The only functional difference is that if you get a ton of Fate points stockpiled, you just have a lot of Fate points, while in this system it rewards you a bit.

except if I am holding Fate points I choose when to spend them

You still do.

but you don't gain any

Yes, you do.

> Any time players would gain a fate point or I would spend one, I flipped a black side to white.

Rather than giving out fate points

key word would

not did

...yes, because this concept has replaced Fate points and provides the same functionality.

You still get +2s and re-rolls and all that jazz.

Just, instead of handing over a token to the GM, the GM flips a coin.

well my problem with that is that other people can spend my fate points then

I don't mind spending my fate points on other people, but I would prefer it was actually my choice to start with

Yes, that is a difference: it's a communal pool of points.

But that's kinda the point; everyone gets a benefit or a penalty when the pool runs out.

It's more like how DRYH has a communal pool of Hope coins.

true

It makes the group dynamic more collaborative and creates more dramatic tension in the choices.

it was a little irksome when one person grabed most of the Hope Coins in one turn though

though to be fair, in DRYH you don't get them as often as a whole group would gain an overall amount of fate points in fate

well the question I was venting about in here before work... is apparently solved with "rule zero, dude. Its your game, do what you want." ... it looked SO much like it was a player trying to minmax somethign

@Tritium21 In some ways "Can I get away with this" questions are worse than "Persuade my GM for me".

In some ways, its a weaker plan than what the rules actually call for for an army of subservient vampires, so I tend to let this one slide.

@Tritium21 Very rarely, and usually only when that's pretty much what they say is going on. "My GM / another player disagrees, what's really the case?" or "please settle this argument between us".

@Tritium21 What question?

The RPG systems we get a lot of questions on tend to be pretty complex, and most people just want to know what the heck's going on with them.

@Tritium21 Rule Zero is not an universal response - the person who asks here expects responses grounded in expertise and experience, saying "whatever works for you mate" is equivalent to saying "I don't know, you figure it out."

Ah man

Someone removed the psion question

Before I could answer it

Good morning

@Sandwich now instead of Fastest Gun in the West you will have Fastest Gum (Eraser)

Did you see that story about that Japanese guy called Kick gun

He can do a triple spinning kick that breaks like three boards

@Sandwich His name is Ingun Yoo. The name Kick Gun is wordplay. I love it.

I want to play in a superhero game now

And make a superhero named Kick Gun

@Sandwich Would that one be based on One Punch Man ? (it just came to mind since the anime adaptation is pretty popular today, never actually seen or read it)

bleh rule zero

the last refuge of the weak

Nah Kick gun is an actual human guy

Who does like super ridiculous kicks in real life

@Sandwich I still remember the day I had the luck to be able to see some Shaolin monks first hand. Pretty impressive.

Kick gun has like a kick where he spins four times and kicks

And he did it on an arcade punch machine

And maxed out the counter

Oh wow

Muffet was created

By the creator of the webcoming Ava's Demon

@Sandwich Muffet?

From Undertale

oh. one of the creatures?

have to go for now. Until next time

I love life's curve-balls. Car needs 600$ in repairs

Not that bad compared to some things but a real kick in the balls around the holidays.

A dramatic opening for an RFS game:

haha

the dracula dossier for Nights Black Agents looks awesome

@BESW a completely improvised campaign for Gumshoe

there's a similar, less ambitious campaign for Trail of Cthulhu called The Armitage Files

@Wibbs "Completely improvised" how?