It's like the null hypothesis problem in academia. You can find plenty of blog posts with ideas, and you can find plenty of posts with success stories, but not a lot of "we tried this, it didn't work", which can really help others try things.
Last season ended with a big shakeup, so this season, instead of being street-level investigators (or just vagrants), half of us now work for the mayor as special liaisons for the magical community. It's like the fifth season of Angel.
I'm happy to be an author or an editor. I have no experience with wordpress, so Admining would be a learning experience (yay) but I wouldn't be of much help.
Unfortunately, I have never met another eimyr, apart from someone genuinely called Eimy R. Who I guess have more of a legitimacy to use this nickname, even if I was first.
When I first got online, I decided to use what I thought was an obscure mythological reference. Only to find that the internet is full of Scandinavians.
I've got more recent stuff, but I thought I'd start with something I've got distance on.
Which of these should I focus on?
- I prioritised my ideas for the story over my friends' fun. - I thought the integrity of the game world would be compromised by taking back something nobody liked. - I assumed we all like the same things in our games. - I thought good book drama would make good RPG drama.
I could write it to be about any or all of that, but if I'm honest the thing that episode really taught me was that just because everything we'd done so far was stuff everyone liked, that didn't mean everything I thought was a good idea would be well received by everyone else.
I can think of some player mistakes as well. Like "Yeah, I know we broke up, but it was pretty amicable, so I don't see a problem with us staying in the game together".
Oh, certainly. Not many of mine, looking back, but I have a friend who used to play angst-ridden characters who would go around to sulk instead of engaging with the game or plot or characters.
One dominated the table by having a gimmick which meant all his scenes were solo; one dominated the table by having a gimmick that made everyone else superfluous; one was too dark for the group's taste.
Troggy and I share "Trying to play twosies with the wrong people."
Trying to think of another good example of "book story don't translate."
...I don't want to tell about the time I was a player in a campaign where the GM hadn't learned that yet.
I don't think this blog should be about others' mistakes.
@BESW I have one "My plot was set up in a way that forced me to do more prep each session until it became unfeasible" and some "my optimized character took everyone's fun", one "I encouraged players to build the world with me and before I realised it wasn't fun for me anymore"
@BESW @Magician Should we have a common post naming theme?
Oh! and That Time I Was Hogging The Spotlight By Not Noticing That Speaking To Another Player On The Side (about unimportant inc random stuff) Grabs GMs Attention And Holds
Oh, I think I have one about That Time I Thought I Was Being Clever By Subverting A Player's Expectations Instead Of Talking To Him About How We Perceive The Setting's Metaphysics Differently.
Sadly, most of the games I play in have monthly sessions at best. Also, players travel from a somewhat greater distance to play. A consequence is that during the month many players misplace their character sheets, or they accidentally leave them at home.
Depending on the game it might be relati...
When I ran 4e, I always kept a pre-made Slayer of the appropriate level, with features selected to minimize analysis paralysis, ready for new players. This would also be a good use for him.
@BESW @lisardggY I've always just pronounced it "Yggdrasil." I think it comes from sitting in the wayback my whole childhood and reading my parents' window-stickers reversed. (I had a brother attend "egelloc ecnidivorp," for instance.)
I think "That doesn't sound like a failure at first." "They never do." should be the lead-in/banner to the blog.
@Miniman meanwhile, we're gettin into my "good" season--all summer I'm at a desk (rather than running around classroom-to-classroom) so I can hop on things pretty quickly.
And by "summer" I mean "only summer," not "lesser summer" or "greater summer" =D
@Miniman I like the ones where I get to dig in and do some research+presentation. Like the "pay rate for an adventurer" or "how much does the mine make" ones. Silly, simple ones are good for rep but not so good for self-image =\
Talk about it. Just posted an answer, did an extensive research, did the extra mile because OP included another question on the fly. Meanwhile, the other answer, who happens to be half as long, and seems to be wrong (from what I understand of the phrasing of the rules) get as much votes...
I mean, it's childish to be disappointed over such a thing, but I can help to feel that way, even though you don't answer for the votes or rep...
@Nyakouai Looks like you're pulling ahead. I don't know enough of 3.x rules to say whether the other answer's right/wrong. I will point you to this meta post for a gentle suggestion to re-compose your answer to read as one seamless post.
Probably. English isn't my native language, so mistakes are possible (even if it were my native language in fact). Perhaps have I misunderstood what Fectin meant. Perhaps I misunderstood the rules :) If someone more knowledgeable pass by, I will gladly accept any input
Thnak you for the link @nitsua60, I'll edit accordingly ^^ Old habits die hard I guess
@nitsua60 Answer edited. Thanks again. Now, I'll keep an eye, in the case someone able to say what, between my interpretation and what I've undestand from Fectin'one is right
@Francisco Stack's algorithm tells me that "revival" is the next badger I should be hunting, and that this question is my likeliest target for success. With a week-long two-person roadtrip on the docket for this week I've concatenated Dragon #153-#266--all of the 90's--into a single .pdf.
We'll see how far driving across Pennsylvania and Ohio gets me =)
@SevenSidedDie do we know that it's not an RPG that spavel's question is about?
I mean, I suspect the way he's framed it it's likely to come back to some 60's-70's era wargames, where unit "hit points" represented individual members falling.
But maybe I'm wrong? And whatever the "beginning of stats" encompasses starts to look like the first rpgs?
I've heard of a game called Braunstein that apparently was the precursor to Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign. Can someone tell me what Braunstein was, and why it's important?
@SevenSidedDie Someone, somewhere in chapter 2 of Playing at the World, pulled that stunt and exploded everyone's heads. They'd figured that the university would be a throwaway location, until it wasn't =)
@SevenSidedDie Uh-oh... a question about Braunstein, which predates Chainmail, which is before RPGs? I'm teasing, but I'm also saying that perhaps there's room for all of these proto-RPG topics?
@nitsua60 How Braunstein was relevant to the beginning of RPGs is definitely about RPGs though. :)
“What was the first RPG to use ability scores?” would be about RPGs (but the answer is boring). “Where did RPGs get ability scores from?” would be on topic, and might be a way to change the question to make it work. The answers may or may not be boring (“from original D&D”, “from wargames”), depending on how far back answerers voluntarily go.
@nitsua60 Crossposted with a comment to that effect. :) I only took a bit long because I was checking to make sure we didn't already have that question.
@lisardggY Where elven trance comes from is about a thing in RPGs. Where RPG stats come from is also about a thing in RPGs, and would be on topic. Which non-RPG game first had stats isn't about RPGs and is off topic. The difference is subtle but critical. The question could probably be transformed into the former, but is off topic as currently written.
@SevenSidedDie Right. That's the trivial part. But once Chainmail establishes the genealogical link to RPGs, it's interesting to explore where Chainmail got it.
I think questions about the precursors of the hobby can be considered on-topic.
To come back to my analogical question, if Tolkien had gotten the idea of trancing elves from an earlier source, would that source be off-topic, since the Tolkien answer established the RPG connection, and any previous source is therefore a non-RPG topic?
I guess I see the slippery-slope argument ("what if an answerer goes back to physiognomy, or to the origins of measurement, to cavemen...") being counterbalanced by the voters. If answers do some digging that's of interest to roleplayers, they'll garner upvotes. If they go off on a flight of fancy, they won't. [baaaa]
@lisardggY When you're abstracting the idea behind the question, yes, it's similar. The question as currently written is not similar though. The current question is off topic—it could be rewritten to be on topic.
@nitsua60 Exactly. What the answers do (and do or don't get voted for) doesn't determine topicality. Topicality is entirely on the question.
I think there's a difference between "RPGs use dice, what were the first games to use dice" (clearly off-topic) and "RPGs use stats, what where the first games to use stats", since it's much more clearly - and expressly stated in the question - in the realm of the known precursors to RPGs.
@lisardggY Precursors are likely not on topic. The exception is probably Chainmail as used in RPGs, because that is/was a thing. I think that's even the existing heuristic: games that are not RPGs are off topic except when used as part of an RPG.
@lisardggY But again, interest is insufficient to be on topic. It's RPG.se, not stuff-RPG-players-are-interested-in.se. That's why Ren Faire, conlangs, historical research, and non-RPG cartography are off topic.
Edited and reopened. And predictably, not a very interesting question. Why not just ask the interesting question at Boardgames.se? I will never understand the tenacity askers have to keep their question where it first landed…
@lisardggY There's a point where the history of the hobby itself just becomes History itself. Stuff that could be used in an RPG is everything—therefore we draw the line. Naturally, it was drawn at “is it about an RPG.”
@SPavel in your third paragraph, can I suggest "what inspired this system" rather than "what proto-RPGs inspired this system"? It seems like a bit of a leading question phrased as-is.
@Francisco But yes, as much as plot resources are useful, it's always better to prep situations than plots as we're used to thinking of them from writing novels. Players are very good at not following prewritten plots.
@SevenSidedDie Thank you, just a daunting task without some helpful techniques to be able to create interesting situations. Or to be able to differentiate between good situations or bad ones.
@nitsua60 Yeah, the “for a good time” caught me right away. It took a bit more looking than I wish I'd done, but the stats are part of that “joke”. Actually, the stats could say something pretty horrifying if you think about it too hard.
@Francisco Good situations are more of an art than a science, and come from practice. The classic description is a situation with a bunch of interesting elements in tension, that is ready for the players to knock out of balance so interesting things happen. Creating that reliably never gets easy, just easier.
@SevenSidedDie Just good to have some tried and true practices I can read from. Then to be able to use that inspiration to make some "hopefully" interesting encounters and situations. :)
hey all: I want to have a 5-room dungeon in my back pocket for tonight. Players are out in the hills looking for where the giants--raiding cattle--are coming from. I know the "guardian" will be one giant who lobs some rocks and tries to run away and warn the others. And the "surprise/treasure room" will have lots of giant-sized hardware that's of a *much* finer quality than these yokels would be expected to have. Any fun ideas for the middle three "rooms"?
@nitsua60 I like water features in caves. A room with a cave river dividing it (which giants can step over/wade through, and throw rocks across!) would be fun. To avoid the problem of players who fall in and are swept away from being split away for a boring time, the river washes them up on the “beach” of a 6th room with some cool things in it (an old skeleton with treasure on it? a back exit from the caves? cool cave writing as a hook for a future adventure?) and a narrow tunnel…
…which leads up to an unseen ledge above the next room. Flanking opportunity once the rest of the group catches up!
@nitsua60 Another oldie-but-goodie is the room full of giant mushrooms. Evocative, lets you use weird creatures like shriekers, and explains what the heck the giants eat. Put in a corner that has a built wooden floor and giant-sized barrels and things, and you've got a larder/kitchen nook to give the caves a bit more life than just a place to fight giants. Put things in the larder that can be used creatively, too—a dozen bags of flour? And what caravan did they raid to get it?
@nitsua60 I've always felt that caves could tell untold stories that have been hidden for a long time. So possibly they start going through the cave, fighting a few monsters of the such, that appear to be coming from a long unused underground temple (carved into the cave walls and such). Before reaching as far as they can possibly descovering some juicy new plot or learning about this area. Could be a nice place for a hook. Like they discover an old tome with magical properties.
@Francisco yeah, there's that sort of thing hovering off just-over the horizon. But I don't really want to get to it yet (read: haven't prepped the big Giant's Keep yet!) but want to start foreshadowing it.
@nitsua60 It could totally be heading into a room where they need to scale down a large cliff (which for a giant wouldn't be hard). But while enroute down the cliff they are greeted by a flying and or other type of monster that could cause them to fall. Or need to make some quick decisions to prevent damage. Such as the forcing any casters to use a levitation type spell. Make that last battle a little more intense having needed to spend spell slots and or possibly have taken some damage.
@Francisco 5e, 3rd level, three members. So things are a little tight at times. (One PC just left for summer holidays, so this'll be first session with only three characters in play.)
also, not default setting/mechanics; only six classes/three races playable, lots of other mods. But the river-swept away-back with a vengeance! idea's totally going to play into their Errol Flynn tendencies.
@nitsua60 I'm fond of "puzzle shrines." A room dedicated to a deity/concept important to the dungeon's occupant or original creator, which yields a reward (blessing, treasure) if you interact with it in a way that the devoted would know but other folks would probably not.
@Francisco Solve a locked-room mystery: something mysterious happens on the boat, and obviously nobody could get on or off, so the culprit is still there. Find them before the boat docks again.
@Francisco Make friends, share wild stories with the crew/passengers, find out about where they're going, see astonishing sea things, get attacked by pirates or sea monsters, make upgrades to the ship...
@nitsua60 Nothing so exciting. Just a lot of instances of dull “and the next day… then the next day…” travel narration before I figured it out. The long lesson is sometimes the hardest way to learn.
@SevenSidedDie that's when I whipped up a MATLAB script to do my overland encounter checks--I just input waypoints and get a listing of what was seen. If the group wants we can play through all, some, or none of them.
**[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!"); [playtest Follow](http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/788/follow-needs-playtesters/ "Help playtest Ben Robbins' new game!"); [UScons](http://casualgamerevolution.com/blog/2016/01/2016-tabletop-gaming-conventions-a-comprehensive-list "List of RPG conventions in the US.");
Today's shower thought: The Mission: Impossible TV series is a bad fit for Fate mechanics because the characters aren't dramatic.
They're people who get into dramatic situations, and incite drama in others, but the main characters are themselves cool, calm professionals who don't let personal problems get in the way of doing the job.
I've heard of a game called Braunstein that apparently was the precursor to Dave Arneson's Blackmoor campaign. Can someone tell me what Braunstein was, and why it's important?
Are there any good websites which have story hooks and plots points for campaigns?
