TRPG General Chat

12:50 AM

Can somebody give the boilerplate "talk to your players about what kind of game they want to play" answer with a 5e twist to this question? I suspect it's less "I'm not GMing the game right" and more "I'm deciding what game to GM without input from the players."

Miniman

I was thinking about an answer based around emotional investment and payoff, but there's no way I'd actually write it.

BESW

That definitely ties into "run a game they want to play."

A lot of investment can be generated just by knowing you're playing a game you had a hand in determining.

Shalvenay

1:04 AM

dice question for you folks -- what are exploding dice used for?

BESW

Setting traps for the unwary.

Shalvenay

@BESW hahaha, how so?

BESW

Seriously though, they're like crits but with more tactile awesomeness.

(And depending on the system, unbounded upper ranges.)

BESW

1:21 AM

I feel like I cheated by answering someone's off-topic question just through proper tagging.

trogdor

lol

Shalvenay

@BESW hahaha.

BESW

"Are there any games where two people take turns being the player and the GM?"

one-on-one round-robin-gming

nitsua60

1:48 AM

Wow. Wow. "The best way to tell what your group needs is to railroad them until they start complaining, and then back off."

trogdor

wat

nitsua60

At least he says you should back off once they are complaining...?

trogdor

but, that implies that you are gaming them

that's hardcore manipulation of an entire group of people

he also implies people will stay silent only because they are ok with everything

I myself sometimes stay silent BECAUSE I am too uncomfortable with something to speak up

BESW

Yeah, that's some deep toxic PUA territory.

nitsua60

PUA?

BESW

1:53 AM

Pick-Up Artist.

Miniman

Pungent Under Arms?

BESW

There's a very unpleasant subset of PUA thought where silence means "yes" and dissent means "try harder."

The rest of the advice in that answer isn't bad, some of it's great.

nitsua60

@BESW yeah, it's a real grab-bag.

nitsua60

2:05 AM

Nice comment

hney there @nitsua60

@Shalvenay hiya

how're things going?

meh--working. Hoping I'll be done before midnight.

Shalvenay

@BESW that's the kind of thought that makes you wish the espousers of it would have a run in with a half-orc-ess who's bigger and stronger than they are, by a long shot...someone who can make their dissent known physically, IOW

nitsua60

2:17 AM

@Shalvenay you?

Shalvenay

@nitsua60 alright here

nitsua60

@BESW btw, good luck with the rest of your "hell-week" You're almost halfway there =)

BESW

2:29 AM

@nitsua60 Urrrrgh. I overbooked today and tomorrow.

And it's not "just do the stuff" work either, it's all "think analytically and creatively" work.

Sometimes I think a career as a professional floor-sweeper would be nice.

While I'm taking some lunch--does anybody have notions about a good system for a "run a speakeasy during Prohibition" RPG without fantastic elements baked into the mechanics?

Miniman

It's certainly something you could do in Fate.

Magician

@BESW Have you seen this?

No idea how baked-in fantasy is in it, but serendipity is strong.

BESW

Getting good booze without becoming embroiled in organised crime; hiring good bartenders and keeping popular musical acts; cooking the books and bribing the cops; generally walking the line of trying to run a business as reputably as possible given it's trading in an illegal substance.

I have not seen that! [click]

Magician

It was retweeted by Evil Hat 40 minutes ago!

BESW

I'm away from my Twitter feed this afternoon!

@Magician @doppelgreener Check it out!

Miniman

2:43 AM

I'm joing in on the declarative statements with exclamation marks!

Magician

I'm merely amused by the pertinence of the tweet!

BESW

@Miniman Why would you do that?!

Miniman

It seemed like a good idea at the time!

BESW

Hmm. Blades in the Dark. I keep seeing that, going "ooh," and then finding something which makes me less interested. But the next time I see it, I always forget what made me less interested the last time.

Miniman

Ringwraiths?

BESW

2:46 AM

Something mechanical, I think?

Miniman

Bicycles?

BESW

....it looks like it's Powered by the Apocalypse.

Miniman

(Sorry, I'm a bit bored atm.)

BESW

Automatic Teller Machine.

(Dodecahedron! Adenoid.)

Miniman

The life of an Automatic Teller Machine is a lonely one. And boring.

BESW

2:50 AM

...anyone who knows why those three phrases go together gets half my Internet points.

Miniman

I googled it and I still have no idea.

BESW

It's one of the few things remaining which is still hard to ferret out with a decent Google search.

Miniman

I'd question that "few".

BESW

Comparatively, Shirley.

Miniman

Hmmm. There's a thesis there.

SevenSidedDie

3:13 AM

@BESW A Dirty World?

Miniman

That reminds me, there's an answer I meant to bounty.

Lucky I left myself a message or I'd have had no idea which question.

Magician

3:29 AM

It's surprisingly difficult to make a pdf that is exactly A4. No matter what I do, acrobat reader says it's slightly larger. Which wouldn't be an issue, except I'm trying to print to both sides with some precision, and evidently on a different system this scaling results in different positioning. Ugh.

It's weird. Even when Acrobat Reader says my document is 11.6x8.2 inches, and A4 is 11.7x8.26 inches, it still wants to scale the doc to 96%.

Miniman

I hear you - recently I was taken in by one of those government sites claiming it's possible to fill forms out online and print them out. Long story short, this doesn't work. Get forms from the post office.

@Magician Print margins?

Magician

@Miniman Possible, even likely. Wouldn't those depend on printer? How do people even do print-and-play...

Miniman

@Magician Generally you can set them yourself, but if the printer doesn't like them it'll cut bits off.

I've yet to use a printer that will actually print to the edge of a page.

Magician

Thankfully, that's not my requirement. I'm just trying to get backs and fronts of cards line up. Which they did on one printer, but not on another.

Shalvenay

@Miniman what happened when you tried?

nitsua60

3:38 AM

@Shalvenay he wound up in Australia.

=D

Miniman

Everything looked ok, but it couldn't be processed.

Wasted about 3 weeks.

Shalvenay

fail :/

Miniman

@Magician A few googles later, it looks like you need to change your printer's settings and acrobat's settings, in that order.

SevenSidedDie

4:10 AM

@Miniman Photo printers can print to the page edge, but it can take some fiddling to enable it for non-photos.

Adeptus

I tried printing item cards for a D&D game on my (marginless-photo-capable) printer. Printing from GIMP (and I think I tried another program), in photo mode. Couldn't get rid of the margin.

SevenSidedDie

@Adeptus I had the same problem when printing a cardstock cover for a booklet I was making from a PDF. It turned out that for my particular printer's drivers I had to choose “US Letter (borderless)” from the paper settings, or every other promise that the printing settings made about borderless printing were lies.

BESW

4:28 AM

@Miniman That's often a mechanical problem: it's easier/cheaper for a printer to move paper through its innards by touching both sides of the page, which makes it a lot harder to also put ink all over the page.

Shalvenay

@BESW then again, you'd think government forms would be designed with the limitations of printing technology in mind

Miniman

Fortunately I rarely have to print anything, and almost never with any precision.

Adeptus

@SevenSidedDie I was printing to snapshot-size (6x4" or something like that) and still had problems

Incidentally, half a 6x4" is a reasonable size for a game card.

BESW

5:40 AM

Powerdork

It works on two layers.

Miniman

I...don't understand either of them.

BESW

@Miniman For starters, that's a Dora bowl.

Miniman

Yes...I'm still missing the point.

BESW

And that's adorable.

trogdor

5:50 AM

oh come on

that is horrid

Miniman

Ouch. Should've spotted that.

trogdor

no, don't give in to that mindset, it really is a silly cheap joke

BESW

It's just an adorable pun.

2

trogdor

MAYBE if it were conveyed audibly instead of visually

lol

still not as bad as my father's jokes

though that is in part because he insists on repeating them for everyone who has not heard them yet regardless of who has heard it 1000 times already XD

Miniman

Lol

That sounds familiar.

trogdor

5:57 AM

yeah, strangely enough this seems to be a thing that might happen to an alarming number of fathers

or from another perspective they could have always been like that

either way it's still a strange occurance

perhaps they even were already like this, but now they have a captive audience in a spouse and children

BESW

6:15 AM

@SirSpam Hi! You'll need 20+ rep to type in chat, but you're welcome to hang out until then.

BESW

7:32 AM

From reading a couple of reviews, A Dirty World looks like it might be a little too noir for the kind of stories we're after in a speakeasy campaign. Very close, though.

trogdor

we were not going for noir?

BESW

This is building on a conversation Greener and I had last Geek Night.

trogdor

maybe my perception of what we were going for was colored by the Maltese Falcon

ah

BESW

He's thinking about a kinda cleaned-up version of Prohibition where it's possible to run a speakeasy without getting too chummy with murderers, enforcing racial segregation, having a decent chance of killing your clients with bad booze...

Kind of like Firefly's version of smuggling: there's lots of bad people, but you don't have to be one of them.

trogdor

ah ok

this is a thing I can fully support

BESW

7:39 AM

Noir, on the other hand, tends to be more about "You can't stay clean, but if you're lucky you can choose which dirt to wallow in."

trogdor

fair enough

I was not thinking of it in that way

plus, to be fair, I am not fully aware of all the things that the concept of Noir encompases

BESW

For example, in The Maltese Falcon, Spade is (among other things) an adulterer, an extortionist, and kind of sadistic. He cultivates a much worse reputation in order to be acceptable in darker circles, but doesn't cross certain lines although he's happy to let people think he does.

trogdor

yeah

he was a real piece of work

BESW

Part of the tension of his story is how close to those lines he edges, and whether circumstances will force (or entice) him to cross them. The people around him are worse off, swept up in events and making terrible choices to get ahead or even just survive.

(That's part of noir, too: the main character is usually one of the only people who both wants to keep some control and has the potential to do so.)

trogdor

mk

yeah, I can see how that stuff doesn't work for most, if not all, of the people in our group

we don't typically want pretty much all of the characters to be just completely horrible people

even the bad guys need to at least either have good reasons for what they do, or be the really cheesy kind of evil villian

BESW

7:53 AM

Yeah, it's a line we're toeing with One Hot Summer.

That genre tends toward noir conventions, and the mechanics enforce it a bit, but our tendency to humanise characters pushes back. I like the tension.

trogdor

yeah, good example that

though to be fair if we were making one of the teens in One Hot Summer some horribly twisted evil person,... that would probably be considered a bit of an issue

BESW

Absolutely.

But the system does like us to feel unconflicted about exposing/punishing most of the culprits we uncover.

Sort of an "acceptable targets" thing.

trogdor

whereas we have kinda twisted the idea around to "what are you willing to do, how far are you willing to go to punish something that was largely a mistake?"

BESW

Yeah. The system and genre are flexible, and pushing and pulling on that flexibility is part of what I like about the game.

trogdor

I mean, the guy deserves some discipline for theft, but the destruction of highly valuable and sentimental property was most decidedly an accident

BESW

7:57 AM

Like, Lance is a jerkbag, no question. He stole the bike of a kid who admires him, wrecked it, and tried to blame someone else.

But the sleuths aren't after retribution; they're planning to force him to make restitution.

trogdor

well, also, I think the part about trying to blame someone else for it was the worst thing he did of all, but was also the last thing he did, which could be accounted for to some degree by desperation of his current predicament

it doesn't Excuse his actions by any means

but it is a reasonable explaination that precludes pure malice

BESW

Right, Lance isn't portrayed as a total waste of flesh--he's an impetuous guy who makes bad, selfish decisions and doubles down on them, which isn't nice but he's understandable and potentially redeemable.

trogdor

though I have to say, again, that you did a good job of making my skin crawl a little as regards his character

he has some work to do if he wants to be a good person

BESW

Mostly he just doesn't think much about other people--he's not out to hurt folks, he just needs to have his empathy settings upped.

And he's, what, 15 or 16? Good time for that kind of learning.

trogdor

well, and most of his thought towards other people involves stroking his vanity

IE, getting praise from them and so forth

BESW

8:03 AM

That's the genius of BGS for me: when you're mostly dealing with teens, it's easier to believe nobody's incorrigible.

trogdor

I would certainly hope so yes

BESW

Speaking of which, I've been studying Veronica Mars as the closest media to what One Hot Summer is like.

trogdor

not entirely familiar with that

BESW

High school girl, father's a PI, she helps with his cases and does side jobs for classmates while the first season arc is about solving the murder of her best friend because she's convinced the police have the wrong guy.

Lots of class conflicts, romance gone sour, loyalties tested, that kind of thing.

trogdor

mk

trogdor

8:22 AM

sounds about right

BESW

It's got good writing, and almost everyone has guest starred in it.

Fibericon

9:18 AM

I have to get on public transport in full costume to get the type of attention my rabbit gets. She's not even trying.

Fibericon

9:35 AM

Speaking of which, I'm wondering if I should go to the upcoming star wars premiere in costume with a saber like I did last time.

BESW

A lot of theatres don't allow props anymore.

And I'm not sure theatres accept sabers as valid currency, even in Brazil.

Fibericon

In Taiwan it's not a problem yet

The last movie had a huge buzz, and I had to make I think 10 sabers. No one has contacted me about this one.

One person asked my wife about a Jedi robe though.

BESW

Yes, well. This one's a hard sell: It's a Star Wars film where we already know what happens later, and folks have been burned on that before. It's a war movie rather than a space opera, so people are wary of the genre shift. And it's got hardly any characters we already know.

It's unlikely to pick up a lot of new fans from the war movie crowd, and they wouldn't be interested in costumes anyway.

The whole thing's a gamble, and I'm curious to see if it pays off.

Fibericon

I have a lot of faith in Disney's ability to do movies.

That said, I still find myself a lot less excited about this one.

BESW

Disney doesn't bomb often, no. But this thing's an interesting risk. Expanding the Star Wars brand into other genres (for the popular market, the EU doesn't really count in the "Disney-sized numbers" sense) could be a massive coup or could scare off already twice-shy existing fans who remember when Star Wars tried to have a movie about trade negotiations and senate debates.

It doesn't have to bomb in order to put a slow leak in their shiny new cash cow.

They need to convince people who don't like space operas that Star Wars is watchable, while not alienating the people who like Star Wars because it's a space opera.

trogdor

9:52 AM

yeah, I am personally,... not sure why I should be interested in this one

it's set in a time period where they pretty much can't change what ultimately happens, with no characters I recognize, and the genre shift also doesn't help

as an afterthought

Fibericon

10:04 AM

Yay no vet visit next week. Rabbit had teeth pulled and was seeing the vet every week. He just cleared her.

trogdor

nice

pets are stressfull, especially when they are having health issues

we have cats, and not only was it distressing when one of them developed a limp, but then I had to personally drive her to the vet, the car trip of which she did not appreciate, and the destination wasn't her favorite thing either

of course, if anyone else took this cat there would have been multiple murders done, she would have gone berserk

Fibericon

Our rabbit hates going out, even to the park.

trogdor

I still didn't relish that task though, it was not the most fun

eimyr

@Fibericon A rabbit... to the park?

trogdor

@Fibericon our cats don't either

Fibericon

10:11 AM

@eimyr we're city folk.

eimyr

but to the park?

How would you prevent him from dashing away?

Fibericon

Leash and harness. Collars don't work on rabbits.

trogdor

what about dogs?

as in, how are you confident they won't mess with the rabbit

Fibericon

You just have to pick a good time and spot

trogdor

ah

eimyr

10:39 AM

@Fibericon perhaps the bun does not like the harness. I know mine despises anything of the sort

BESW

I once supervised a dog that could get out of any restraint it could get a little bit of tension on.

eimyr

was his name Sing Sing?

BESW

No, Yodel.

Fibericon

11:04 AM

@eimyr Entirely possible. We have tried multiple harnesses, thinking maybe our first couple of choices were bad, but disliking the whole concept sounds like something I would do. I have a lot in common with that furball, so I won't rule that out.

Anaphory

11:39 AM

@eimyr When just reading these two comments, I thought I came to the end of a long line of musical dog pun names :(

Joel Harmon

12:32 PM

@BESW Perhaps you've heard of the card game Punderdome? On an unrelated note, my friends are no longer returning my calls.

BESW

@JoelHarmon Hey @trogdor, I think I found your dad's Christmas gift.

Joel Harmon

@BESW "Knowing how it ends" reminds me of Romeo and Juliet, in which the first dozen lines are spoilers for the rest of the play

BESW

Some stories it works, others it doesn't.

A lot depends on presentation, but also what the story's about.

R&J is about the drama of a trainwreck, so we have to start out being told it's a trainwreck.

If Rogue One is about destroying a superweapon... [buzzer] We know how it ends. The trailers make it unclear what the actual stakes are for the main character, but it's gonna have to be about her, not about the Death Star.

Joel Harmon

The trailer also makes it unclear whether the movie contains any Bothans, which is pretty unacceptable

BESW

Wasn't that the second Death Star?

Fibericon

12:37 PM

@BESW But what if it's -another- super weapon? Like, if the empire just had dozens of them lying around. That would be even more badder for everyone!

Joel Harmon

on the other hand, the recent trailers for Suicide Squad made it seem much more Joker-focused than it was. Moral is, marketing is there to deliberately deceive you

also, I need to head out

BESW

ttfn

The critically endangered Philippine eagle is a magnificent bird! (Photo: Shauming Lo) https://t.co/gJwslVv0Q4

Tweeted by Strange_Animals on November 30, 2016 at 12:45 PM

doppelgreener

1:51 PM

Tis nearly the season for Hatmas!

LegendaryDude

5:42 PM

@BESW Yeah, many bothans died to get the plans for the second Death Star. We've had that conversation like 6 times in the office here.

Zachiel

6:38 PM

I risk a 7-players D&D 4e party.

On the brighter side, the theme for our winter convention is "Régime". Apart from Dog Eats Dog and Mars Colony, which other games deal with similar themes?

doppelgreener

7:05 PM

@Zachiel Paranoia

Zachiel

7:30 PM

@doppelgreener Righ. Luckily, we already have that in the rooster.

doppelgreener

9:15 PM

@SevenSidedDie I enjoyed your winterbash announcement very much.

SevenSidedDie

@doppelgreener It was fun to write! But I fear I may be painting myself into a corner of ever-escalating Winterbash announcements.

doppelgreener

Just do a theme change next year!

Nobody will even remember back far enough to recognise you retconned it. Or just assume that's the case, like any sensible TV producer, and ignore the undeniable truth that everyone will remember.

BESW

Should I start collecting more Doctors to put hats on?

SevenSidedDie

@BESW Absolutely.

doppelgreener

I wonder if there'll be a Doctor-y hat this year...

SevenSidedDie

9:18 PM

@doppelgreener Yeah, that should work. Last year was “slightly unhinged”, this year was “apocalypse”. Next year will be kittens.

BESW

There's always a Doctor-y hat.

doppelgreener

Oh there is!?

SevenSidedDie

I think so? There was the TARDIS hat, the Tom Baker scarf'n'hat… I don't recall what else.

doppelgreener

If something strikes my fancy this year I might do a themed thing as well.

Will definitely open a photo album this year when it begins.

SevenSidedDie

This year I will continue to mourn the lack of the return of the 2013 Johnny Threehats hat.

So magnificently tall…

doppelgreener

9:23 PM

i understood that reference, even

SevenSidedDie

Incidentally, previous Winterbashes are partially documented here: stackpromos.com/promos

doppelgreener

gosh that bowler hat from 2012 was dapper. i want another one.

The Oracle

9:58 PM

5

Q: As foretold in prophecy, the Hatpocalypse approaches!

As foretold in prophecy and by the tales of our surviving elders, the Hatpocalypse is nearly upon us once again. Every year, when the air gets cold and nights get long,1 hats descend upon the site. Some are merry in their frivolity. Some are terrible to behold. All are earned by the choices we ma...

Ben

@nitsua60 @mxyzplk @KorvinStarmast I'd like to discuss with you in a bit more detail exactly what the situation was /is for my question so I can get the right content to explain what my situation is

BESW

**[Timely RPGery](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nKltjD1HJ954pS3QZZL-E_ckNaKEeedxMKn7XwdFiio/edit?usp=sharing "Click for full source doc; please suggest items to pin!"):**
[BoH](https://bundleofholding.com "Buy RPGs cheap in bulk, support charities & indie designers!");
[Indie Cornucopia 4](https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Cornucopia4 "BoH's fourth annual all-new collection of stellar small-press tabletop roleplaying games");
[D&D](http://www.enworld.org/forum/content.php?3634-Classic-D-D-of-All-Eras-Back-In-Print "Print on demand PDFs from all earlier editions!");

Ben

In other news, an actual attempt at actual diplomacy (like, actually talking to each other, rather than just killing everyone and asking the last man standing if he wants to die), failed miserably; with the wrong people being befriended, the squishy guys losing limbs, the Tank coming out unscathed, and the wrong guy(s) getting dismembered.

BESW

10:16 PM

**[Timely RPGery](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nKltjD1HJ954pS3QZZL-E_ckNaKEeedxMKn7XwdFiio/edit?usp=sharing "Click for full source doc; please suggest items to pin!"):**
[Hatmas!](http://meta.rpg.stackexchange.com/q/6615/4398 "The Hattening Approaches. Dec 19");
[chat feeds](http://meta.rpg.stackexchange.com/q/3041/4398 "Suggest and vote for our ticker feeds");
[Cornucopia 4](https://bundleofholding.com/presents/Cornucopia4 "Bundle of Holding's all-new collection of stellar small-press tabletop roleplaying games. Dec 12");

Miniman

@Ben A meta question is probably a better way to do that.

doppelgreener

10:50 PM

@BESW @Magician Thank you! :)

BESW

@doppelgreener It's Powered by the Apocalypse, which may or may not be rough for us.

Check out A Dirty World too; it's an ORE game.

But as I've said earlier, I think noir isn't quite the right way to go for your vision.

doppelgreener

@BESW i'm interested to see what this one does with it; may or may not work well ofc

i get the impression the playtest may also involve me just participating as a player in other peoples' games, such as the author's

BESW

Yeah.

mxyzplk

11:34 PM

@Ben Sure. The events and reactions of the people involved are probably clear to you but they're not clear to us, and they're weird, which means we must be missing something.

Specifically the players' reaction of lost investment doesn't seem to have any backing, and both parts of your question title seem off - you didn't describe them "losing interest," and you have a problem, which "amateur GMing" isn't really the key to (and it makes people give you random new-GM advice instead of addressing the question).

It's also unclear what you're asking. Are you asking how to stop things from getting to where you feel like you need to wipe the slate clean? That's the only question in your question, but there's not a lot of detail about why that happened except for largely obvious or unavoidable things (take better notes, and you'll always lose players). Is it how to do a slate-cleaning without provoking whatever feelings the players are having?

Is it how to get your players back on track now that they have these feels?

Describe the problem for someone who has no knowledge of you or your players and then clearly say what you want to happen, that's your question...

trogdor

@BESW oh good lord, I am torn between thinking this is perfect for him and thinking I have to hide it forever now

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