TRPG General Chat

12:52 AM

> Summer’s mother believed that books were safe things that kept you inside, which only shows how little she knew about it, because books are one of the least safe things in the world. ("Summer in Orcus")

BESW

1:09 AM

**[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](http://arsludi.lamemage.com/index.php/788/follow-needs-playtesters/ "Help playtest Ben Robbins' new game!");
[playtest](https://drive.google.com/file/d/0By3enwcFNlhKa0lpbXNjTFpWZkU/view "Help playtest an RPG for kids 4 to 7");

nitsua60

1:37 AM

@KorvinStarmast in re this comment, I've always found this an excellent excuse to say to the player "yeah, you know, that bugs me too. Do you think you could try whipping up some variant? We'd agree on some evaluation criteria beforehand (doesn't slow things down too much, ease of use, balance among classes, &c.) and then do some one-on-one playtesting...."

Usually good for a few months' peace and quiet, possibly some fun duet half-hours, once in a blue moon a workable house-rule, and once a player converted to GM when he realized that if running things 30 min at a time was so much fun then running a session might not be bad.

Magician

2:53 AM

@RollingFeles I haven't played Hillfolk, but was dubious about it‌.

RollingFeles

3:17 AM

@Magician thank you! That is very interesting, although, I'm only half way through: can't dedicate much time for reading at work :) Looks like you're not a fan of narrative rpgs , are you?

Magician

That's not true at all, I've been running lots of Fate lately. Though that post was written a while back, so maybe my opinion would be different today...

But that's always a risk.

RollingFeles

I see. Yeah, 2012.

RollingFeles

3:35 AM

That was a good read. But I'm even more inclined to give it a try :)

Magician

Let me know how it goes!

RollingFeles

4:01 AM

I will, but it won't happen soon. Have to run main campaigns and there are a couple of lightweight games I want to try first.

doppelgreener

6:34 AM

@Magician your blog URL could alternately be read as Pondering Song Games

doppelgreener

6:49 AM

@Magician I like the dialog there around the first comment. "Exploiting the mechanics? That's not the point, you're telling a story, if you want mechanics to exploit play a game like D&D." "Yeah but the mechanics in a narrative game are meant to push a certain type of story, if we could tell the story without the system we'd just do freeform."

Magician

7:46 AM

One of the few posts with actual discussion under it in my blog. Probably because there aren't all that many posts about Hillfolk, so people find it.

BESW

Tonight's musical loop is The Divine Comedy's "I Joined the Foreign Legion (to Forget)."

BESW

10:32 AM

[downloads RPG beta from Kickstarter page]
[opens pdf, looks at section headings]
"Basic Weapon Rules"
"Striking Class Weapons"
"Pistol Class Weapons"
"Rifle Class Weapons"
"Shotgun Class Weapons"
"Demolition Class Weapons"
[sighs, closes pdf]

kviiri

Less is more.

BESW

I mean, sure, it's a game where violence is a major part of the experience (the setting is a dystopian future where PCs are humans in a world where only killing robots is considered murder). But it's also about corruption and mystery and scarcity.

Miniman

@BESW Well, theoretically...

BESW

And it has a whole chapter on weapons and armor, but not a single section heading refers to mysteries even obliquely.

(For reference, it's Synthicide.)

kviiri

I think it's something of a law of game design - combat always gets the most attention.

BESW

10:46 AM

It's definitely a common thing, and for games like 4e, sure, that's very reasonable.

But it tends to be a turnoff for me.

Synthicide looks like a really cool setting where the most boring thing you can do with an NPC is shank him.

In order to enforce the theme that killing humans is commonplace while killing robots is a Major Deal, I'd probably instead streamline combat to make it fast and brutal--the combat isn't the interesting part of that setting, it's the fallout from combat.

The space between "I chose to kill someone" and "I killed someone" is likely to be a dead zone, dramatically speaking, for that kind of setting.

kviiri

I'm fine with combat being a major theme in many games, I just feel it's over-represented in the grand scheme. Sort of like every other way for dealing with problems is an "alternative way".

BESW

Aye.

I do much prefer games which treat non-combat solutions as at least equal in weight.

Miniman

@kviiri I'd talk to you about this, but killing you just seems so much more normal.

3

BESW

But with a premise like Synthicide, it feels like the game is missing a great opportunity to make a dramatic and interesting choice in favour of going for the safer version of the omnipresent combat style.

When I read the setting premise, I imagine a system that'd make killing the fast and easy solution to most obstacles (mechanically) but with long-lasting repercussions which make it a very meaningful story choice.

kviiri

So, you guys have experience playing Microscope? It's a sort-of history-building game, right?

BESW

10:55 AM

I've played two or three sessions.

kviiri

The only history-building game I've played is Here Be Dragons. It was fun, but I felt it would've been better without all the dragon stuff.

BESW

And yeah, it's a game for collaboratively creating a setting and its history in a non-linear fashion.

Tritium21

im just gonna drop this here.... kickstarter.com/projects/2128084323/…

BESW

Important bits:
- At the start of the game the group decides the beginning and ending of the history, in broad terms. The game is played to find out how and why the setting moved from the beginning to the end.
- Nobody can offer suggestions when it's your turn. You have to come up with something on your own.
- You can add tiny details or broad events at any point on the timeline so long as they don't directly contradict something that's already established.
- Your additions can dramatically change how we understand something that's already established.

kviiri

@BESW Sounds pretty cool.

BESW

11:00 AM

@Tritium21 Yup, it's in the Timely RPGery pin, and will come up visible in a few days.

Tritium21

@BESW Excellent. ... because I just backed it and its not quite there yet >.>

BESW

@kviiri Example: we played a game about how a great empire was destroyed by a technovirus which turned living creatures into cyborgs, leaving only a handful of humans alive in the end.

Early on we established a scene toward the beginning of the timeline where some scientists accidentally let the virus loose from their lab.

Tritium21

reads back some So here's the thing with me and some of these stroy-type games... and I don't know if its just me or if this is a split in the community or something... but if you tell me "you tell me what happens now... or what happened then" and offer no bounds... I vapor lock

BESW

Then in a scene toward the end of the timeline we established that the technovirus had created cyborg dragons, and the only remaining humans were in Australia.

Tritium21

@nitsua60 Don't worry, we undid it.

BESW

11:06 AM

...and then a scene in the middle established that the scientists had been dragons in a draconic empire which subjugated humans, and instead of humans in Australia being the only ones who'd escaped conversion... humans were the only living beings immune to the virus.

kviiri

@BESW The name sort of makes sense then. You start with a rough description what's happening, and then zoom in to see what actually went down.

BESW

And that in the end, humans were able to overthrow their draconic overlords because of a flaw in the technovirus that had converted them.

So the empire was destroyed by a technovirus, leaving only a handful of surviving humans, but not at all in the way we'd imagined.

@kviiri Right. And you zoom down into different periods in the history to see different parts of it, whatever you think is interesting.

A powerful feature of the system is that, because contribution is non-linear, players can feel free to destroy awesome stuff because we can always just go back to before it was destroyed if we still want to play with it later.

kviiri

Clever

BESW

This lets the system give each person almost unlimited authority to declare things true (within the limits agreed on by the group at the beginning of the session, and the things already declared true) without worrying about social backlash from their friends.

Tritium21

(I guess, my own comment is summarized with "'You can do anything!' is a lie, and storytelling games really force you to believe it")

BESW

11:12 AM

There's also a more traditional RPG element: if the thing you're adding is a single scene, you can choose to (instead of just saying what happens) set the scene and have every player RP as someone in the scene.

kviiri

Regarding combat in games, I think the problem is a vicious cycle in that players are quite aware of the problem and tend to roll with it. If the game offers multiple skill-sets, the ones focusing on combat are assumed to be capable of clearing any challenges in one way or another. Whereas with smooth-talkers or stealth-oriented characters, there's no certainty - it's quite common for games (both tabletop and video games) to have at least some hurdle that can't be bypassed without combat.

BESW

If you do that, you define a simple question that the scene is playing to discover. As soon as that question is answered, the scene ends.

kviiri

@BESW Sounds really cool.

BESW

(We played to answer "Why was the virus released?" Trogdor could've changed the scene dramatically by instead asking "Who paid for the virus to be released?")

Anaphory

@BESW I looked at that and thought “Huh, Microscope with a twist?” – I must have missed the

> You have to come up with something on your own.

last time I read the rules.

BESW

11:15 AM

@Anaphory [goes digging for quote]

kviiri

Here Be Dragons was quite fun but eh... it felt too much like four separate histories (one for each player) than a single story.

Anaphory

@BESW Or maybe I had seen it and have forgotten in the meantime. I don't know, it's been a while, but at least Microscope is in my 2nd list, not in my 1st!

BESW

Page 27, "...But Don't Collaborate."

> Nothing will kill your game faster than playing by committee. When it’s someone else’s turn, don’t coach. Explaining the rules is fine, but don’t suggest ideas. Even if another player wants ideas, don’t give them. Let them come up with something.

Anaphory

Sounds familiar.

BESW

> If you collaborate and discuss ideas as a group, you’ll get a very smooth and very boring history. But if you wait and let people come up with their own ideas, they may take the history in surprising and fascinating directions. It can be hard to sit silently and watch someone think, but the results can be awesome. You’ll get a chance to interact more fluidly when you role-play Scenes.

Page 73 "The Hotseat" talks about why the game made that choice and what it does for the experience.

Tritium21

11:18 AM

@BESW I actively hate that rule. I would at least need something to start with

BESW

One of the points is that it helps even out contributions. Collaborations almost always wind up with some people having more influence than others, just because of social pressures and personality differences.

@Tritium21 You have something to start with.

The whole first part of the game is collaborative. The Hotseat rule is for after the Big Picture, Bookends, and Palette, have already been established in consultation.

Anaphory

@Tritium21 It's very often a case of looking at a timeline with something strange in it and asking “I wonder why THAT happened” or “I wonder what THAT led to in the mit-term”

BESW

And as soon as a single turn has passed, there's Focus and Legacy prompts.

kviiri

I find committee gaming to be a very bad thing in general. It works in some games, like Pandemic (if all players have roughly equal skill levels) but tends to create a lot of unnecessary drag otherwise.

BESW

It was very helpful for me, as I tend to dominate consultations even when I'm trying hard not to.

Giving Troggy space to add his own takes on the situation is always worth it though.

Tritium21

11:21 AM

Shadowrun levels of analysis paralysis does stink...

BESW

I feel like Atomic Robo's Brainstorming mechanic has potential in this direction but it needs a little tweaking before it can really come into its own.

Tritium21

I dont think anything interesting would ever happen on my turn, unless you give me a day to think about it

BESW

@Tritium21 That's where acting out scenes can be useful.

Instead of coming up with a Thing That Happens, you can ask a Question About A Thing and we play to find it out.

But really, it's not half so much an empty page as it sounds.

Tritium21

That is a good exit strategy for a player like me

Anaphory

@Tritium21 Seriously, I doubt it. Also, the thing you might find boring might be the thing surprising everyone else, so dare to play boring.

(Which RPG book is very much about that precise sentiment? I can't remember.)

Tritium21

11:25 AM

Sounds like Huey Louis the RPG

BESW

As the game progresses you don't just get a sequence of events, you also get Legacies which are things the players have said they want to see more of. And each round someone chooses a theme for that round to focus on.

kviiri

Probably the most awkward thing about playing Pandemic is trying to play with new players. They make bad calls (which is perfectly normal) but instead of letting them do it and learn, many of my usual teammates pretty much dictate their moves.

I can tell them not to, maybe once or twice during the game. But they forget soon, and start again, and if I constantly nag about it it's not fun for anyone.

BESW

And before the first round starts, everyone's contributed to a list of things they'd be okay with that aren't necessarily implied by the history yet, and things they definitely don't want to see although they're common to that sort of history.

(That "things we'd like to see which you might not expect" is how we got dragons in our technovirus history.)

Tritium21

I should probably seek out an AP of this game. It still sounds very blank page, but i trust you that it isnt

kviiri

I really want to play it now.

BESW

11:30 AM

The Focuses of the rounds can be fun too. Like, one round was Focused on a hero of the war. So for one person's turn we played a scene a hundred years later to answer the question "How is she remembered?"

kviiri

I'm really big on constructed histories.

BESW

And yeah, I'm gonna agree with "dare to be boring."

Several turns established things the player thought were obvious and hardly needed saying but they couldn't think of anything else.

The details of those events were unique to the player's vision of the history, and fleshed out details in ways the rest of us didn't expect--often re-interpreting previously established events.

Anaphory

@kviiri So do I. Didn't we have a main question on how to play Microscope online?

BESW

21

Q: What software utilities provide support for playing Microscope?

I'm interested in playing Microscope online and was wondering if anyone knows what tools exist that might support this? Microscope differs from many RPGs in that it is primarily playing using blank index cards, which you fill in as you play and arrange in a timeline. Features such as battle-map...

Anaphory

@BESW Maybe “boring” is a misleading term to those unfamiliar with the concept, “obvious” sounds much clearer.

BESW

11:34 AM

10

Q: Running Microscope for the first time using online

I'm planning to run a game of Microscope for the first time with players who've never played it before as well (hello deep end!) and it's going to have to be online as my players of choice are scattered across the country. I'm planning on using skype and google docs plus possibly a chat interfac...

gm-techniques online-roleplaying microscope

Some context that may be missing: each element in the history, including themes and similar "want to see more" choices, is represented by an index card on the table.

Their relationship to each other is defined by position and orientation.

So every contribution to the game is literally sitting there on the table after it's made, and you're adding your contribution physically to the construct.

So, yeah, @Tritium21, I agree that totally open "truly do anything" mechanics can easily lead to lockup. I've seen it a lot.

But while Microscope gives a LOT of open space, it also gives a lot of handles to grab onto.

Tritium21

As long as it has ample nucleation sites a decent crystal of an idea can form

BESW

There are some definite edges you can't bypass, like the list of things people don't want to see, and the three kinds of events you can add, and the Focus of the round.

(The game strongly encourages whoever reads the rules to be the first player on the first round, to model things and make sure there's more handles for the newer players to grab on their first turns.)

Tritium21

I guess for me, I usually see other players ideas as nucleation sites. My initial reaction to that being verboten comes from taking that away. but if the game itself provides more... yeah, i dont have an issue with that

BESW

Yeah, the other players' ideas are still very much the nucleation sites for you.

They're just banned from adding nucleation during your turn.

Their ideas are already on the table. Everybody's contributed to the "add/ban" list, everyone's added at least one scene already, somebody's chosen the theme for that round's turns to focus on, and every round after the first adds to or changes a running list of stuff people would like to see more of.

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 The other approach is to ask the player, in 5e, why he didn't take the Mounted Combat feat. :P Having been through detailed simulationist stuff in early D&D, Runequest, C&S, where we tried out a lot of stuff, if everyone is really into it, and the group comes up with something workable, then the play does not slow down.

@nitsua60 The problem is if one player is all over that kind of detail and others are not. I like 5e's KISS principle approach, even though we do lose some of the neat stuff we tried out over the years. I am still not happy with how 5e handles Paladin mounts. It's "almost" right but the general mounted combat rules mean you do have to make some stuff up locally to get the "feel" right ... my two cents.

BESW

11:50 AM

One word of warning re: Microscope. Don't try to play it with an existing setting in mind. It was recommended to me but it failed miserably, and everything I've seen since supports that it's just asking for a Bad Time.

Tritium21

"Rough edges and a little broken" is apparently a design goal of D&D5e

BESW

@Tritium21 It does seem to be the sweet spot for a lot of the D&D experience, so kudos for identifying and hitting their target.

Tritium21

@BESW Thats... interesting. Does it take "i want to run a <genera feeling> game?" well? or is it best to start totally blank?

BESW

@Tritium21 Genre should work.

The trick is, an already-established setting adds a lot of stuff not on the table that you can't contradict.

Tritium21

So "Space opera" is probably ok where "Star Wars" is not

BESW

11:54 AM

Right. For Microscope to work properly you need to be able to kill Anakin Skywalker whenever you want.

Tritium21

To be fair, when I play FFG Star Wars, tattoine is obliterated from orbit by the players before episode 1 (or some other canon changing events)

but i see where you are coming from

BESW

You could use Star Wars to inspire an arc of history, though.

Tritium21

If the example is a space opera... from what I understand of the game, i would expect the history to be an amalgamation of the Star Wars, Star Trek, and Star Gate TV Tropes pages

You have sold me on this game, where do i buy it?

BESW

Well, you'd start with a Big Picture overview, a short sentence that summarises the curve of the part of history the game will be about.

@Tritium21 Here or here.

Tritium21

Danke.

BESW

12:01 PM

Like, a Star Wars inspired history might be, "An interstellar government falls and rises."

Or "The Forces of Darkness almost destroy the Warriors of Light."

Tritium21

See, I can take that and i can think of 3 stargate plotlines to steel from, 2 star trek, BSG... Tolkin...

BESW

Right.

Anaphory

YES!

BESW

So step 2 is defining the first and last Period (relatively big chunk of your history) in your arc.

Tritium21

Is it unfair to say this sounds like TV Tropes the game? You have an overarching idea, then nail down the details?

Anaphory

12:05 PM

It's about as much TV Tropes the game as any other exercise in fiction…

Tritium21

fair

Anaphory

The example we are discussing now does of course point to a huge amount of well-known tropes.

kviiri

Tropes are not bad. (M'kay.)

BESW

Describe 'em with one or two sentences each and determine if each is Dark (sad) or Light (optimistic).

Tritium21

@kviiri I have written short stories with TV Tropes as a paint-by-numbers guide. Nothing I care to share, but i have done it... and it wasn't horrible

BESW

12:09 PM

First: "The Forces of Darkness recruit their first allies, while the Warriors of Light find an exceptional child. (Light)"
Last: "The Forces of Darkness are defeated, leaving a war-torn galaxy to lick its wounds. (Dark)"

kviiri

@Tritium21 I have some friends who write short fiction. A bit cheesy for my taste, but I respect they have the effort. Even the ones who deliberately try to avoid tropes wind up collecting mountains of them. Clichés, even.

Anaphory

We could equally well have the arc be “Life and lies of a bronze age chief dynasty”, and would draw much more on less well known/an entirely different set of tropes.

BESW

Then everybody takes turns adding something they would like to see or would NOT like to see.

So if someone goes and writes "prophecies and psychic mumb-jumbo" on the Ban list, suddenly it's not Star Wars anymore.

Tritium21

Or BSG

BESW

Or the Foundation series.

kviiri

12:11 PM

@Tritium21 And of course, many times when one goes out of their way to subvert a trope it's going to be so obvious that the subversion itself becomes something of a cliché.

BESW

On the other hand, someone can write "nuclear-powered space whales" on the Add list, but that doesn't mean they exist. It just means everyone is free to add them if it ever seems desirable.

Tritium21

...and i hope free to interpret that poetically

BESW

So if, for example, someone writes "Planet-destroying superweapons" they still might not ever come up.

BUT it does mean that nobody can add anything which absolutely makes it impossible to have nuclear-powered space whales or planet-destroying superweapons.

Tritium21

Would it be kosher to interpret Nuclear Powered Space Whale as something like... Lexx

BESW

We've said it's a history that COULD have those things, even if it never does, and that's a powerful contribution.

@Tritium21 That'd be something to ask.

kviiri

12:18 PM

@BESW That sounds like a fun way to implement a "wishlist" without being too direct about it.

BESW

Aye.

Then everyone takes a turn adding a single Period (large chunk of history) or Event (specific happening within an existing Period) to the timeline before starting the first round proper.

Periods might be "The Clone Wars" or "The Construction and Destruction of the First Death Star."

Events would then be "The Discovery of the Clones" or "The Battle of Yavin." And within those Events would be Scenes like "Obi-Wan learns who ordered the clones" or "Why Han Solo came back."

kviiri

Wish fulfillment is surprisingly complicated. I like that scene where I narrowly save an ally's life or assert power over a defeated villain or something. I could just ask my GM, "hey, could I get a scene where I deliver a monologue to the bandit lord before we hang him?" and he could just let me. But it wouldn't feel the same if I didn't earn it.

BESW

Indeed.

Dungeon World would say "Sure, go ahead," and just let you--but then you'd roll to see the outcome of the monologue and it might not go the way you want.

kviiri

I wouldn't make my players roll that, it's hardly a move. Well, maybe there could be a custom move...

BESW

Depends on the goal, really.

kviiri

12:28 PM

True, true.

The angry mob threatening to set the bandit lord free and lynch you instead? Definitely defy danger.

BESW

Trying to puff yourself up in front of the townsfolk? That could go amusingly wrong.

Maybe trying to give your friend a boost in the polls as they run for mayor? Aid or Interfere, probably.

Last week my bard boosted a Paladin's I Am the Law! move by providing some rousing background music.

kviiri

:D

BESW

It didn't match any magical bard-specific moves, it was just Aid or Interfere.

kviiri

I think I need to remind my party that Help / Interfere exists.

For some reason, it seems people forget about those way too often.

BESW

I failed the roll, and so did the paladin, so we both got dragged off by the guards.

yeah, in my limited experience folks tend to focus a lot on their own playbook moves to the detriment of the common moves their playbook doesn't explicitly modify.

Tritium21

12:34 PM

In AWE games I usually attach the list of basic movies to the sheet

(usually though, this means adding stuff to a pdf)

BESW

A well-composed AWE game doesn't really need any extra playbook-specific moves. They're just fancy bits.

...oh my goodness, I've become a No Frills Milk customer.

> "I see the cow, but where's the milk?"
"Milk that's already outside the cow is a frill."
"Okay, so you're going to milk the cow for me?"
"Having someone milk the cow for you is a frill."
"I see... got a bucket I can use?"
"Not having to bring your own bucket--"
"--would be a frill. I get it."

BESW

12:50 PM

(Paraphrased from Gordon Korman's "No Coins, Please.")

kviiri

No Frills Milk is the best milk.

nitsua60

1:14 PM

=)
I remember someone posting in meta "just vote your conscience, nothing can't be undone." So I did. I'd be curious where it is you see daylight between the two. (The carried vs. not distinction seems non-dispositive to me--is there something else I'm missing?)

BESW

I have this argument with my computer ALL THE TIME. https://t.co/N2OV7WvUh5

Tweeted by Wheeler on September 23, 2016 at 1:55 AM

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast Yeah, definitely a serious mismatch when there's a minigame that only one player wants to participate in. It's the same difficult dynamic I see in most traditional RPGs, where there are somewhere between 4-10 included games that need balancing and which players differently-enjoy. But exacerbated.

@BESW one thing I love about Microscope is that in forcing players to be quiet during certain periods, it can really teach the value of listening during any game.

BESW

1:33 PM

Indeed.

I don't find Microscope a really compelling game in and of itself (it just doesn't grab me in a gameplay way, though I admire the mechanics), but it really helps me improve myself for other games.

Miniman

@nitsua60 Don't comment my answers while I'm writing them!

BESW

...okay, Fragment has some very interesting ideas.

UrhoKarila

Always interesting to be editing a post and see a comment pop up

"Is this asking about something I'm addressing?"

BESW

It's a GMless game where players are robots activated as minions in service of two competing overprograms.

If/when your robot is destroyed, you can roll a new robot... or take over playing as one of the overprograms.

(Robots start out defined by their form and designed function, but over time they unearth memories of their long-dead human creators which can change them.)

nitsua60

@BESW I found it fun to play for its own sake once or twice, but now use it exclusively as a tool for other campaigns. In my current 5e campaign, for instance, we'll occasionally break out that setting's "microscope deck" when we've got 20 minutes and want to make up/learn some interesting new thing about our setting.

@Miniman is this the gender thing?

@UrhoKarila "don't have it to hand at the moment."
GASP!

=)

@Miniman yes, it is. I see it now.

Speaking of gender in 5e, does anyone know if there were any explicit statements during its design about gender norms? It seems to me like they have tried to be pretty vague with language in a manner that doesn't push any sort of agenda but which is less binary-traditional than previous editions.

kviiri

1:51 PM

@BESW Making my own history storytelling game is one of my own Duke Nukem Forevers. Never going to happen.

But always progressing.

UrhoKarila

@nitsua60 I'm not sure. I don't remember to much that pushes gender in the books, aside from different name lists for men & women

Not even suggested variation in height/weight for the sexes

BESW

@nitsua60 Yo. D&D 5e explicitly talks about genderqueer characters, and the devs have spoken on it.

It was kind of a big deal when those paragraphs first went public.

UrhoKarila

@BESW Cool

nitsua60

That's right--I'd forgotten that paragraph. (Guess it's not so much that I'm good at picking up subtleties, but that I'm good at forgetting obvious...ities(?))

kviiri

I find it weird that many roguelikes ask the player character's gender identity while having absolutely nothing to do with that info.

UrhoKarila

1:59 PM

Aside from tailoring some pronouns

maybe

kviiri

Possibly, but Roguelikes are usually narrated in second-person, making third-person references to the PC fairly minimal.

nitsua60

@BESW That's a bad paragraph to have forgotten, given that two days ago I was on that page rolling up my female character's height and weight. Also, "you don't need to be confined to binary notions of sex and gender" is slightly stronger language than I'd remembered.... [/slap on wrist]

kviiri

My personal favorite Roguelike, Dungeon Crawl, puts effort into not having gender identities for their gods. It's a bug if a god's gender is shown in-game, eg through a third person pronoun.

Nox

Hello everybody. What's new?

kviiri

Nothing special, packing up at work and preparing to blast off to a hopefully great weekend.

BESW

2:08 PM

@kviiri You might like to read the Imperial Radch trilogy by Ann Leckie.

It's very much about individual and social identity, body politics, gender as a cultural construct, and similar subjects (also colonisation).

The main character is the last remaining body of a person who spent her entire life as many bodies.

And she comes from a culture that has no consistent gender signifiers in its language or its fashion and customs, so when she has to identify someone by gender she just guesses. (The first-person narration defaults to "she" in all other situations.)

Very interesting stuff, and many reviews fixate on the "she instead of he" default pronoun choice as a gimmick and miss a lot of what's really going on.

Anyway, sleep for me. ttfn

Nox

Been reading up about this game - Chuubo's Marvelous Wish-Granting Engine. Anybody tried it?

kviiri

I think the genderless gods are just a sort of anti-distraction. There'd be no point in having a gender for a god (like there's no point in having one for the player), so it's omitted.

I personally picture Sif Muna, Vehumet, Jiyva, Elyvilon, Nemelex Xobeh, Ashenzari and Lugonu as female forms.

nitsua60

I'm not sure I follow: if there's no point in having a gender for a god, why do you assign "female" to that list?

(I think there's probably a subtlety in what you're saying that I'm missing.)

UrhoKarila

Just took a look at the AngryGM link that popped up in the feed

Long, rambling introduction about how people that dislike the long, rambling introductions should read this long, rambling introduction because it's a long ramble about how he's made it easy to skip long, rambling introductions

I'm not sure how I feel about this

kviiri

@nitsua60 I don't see the contradiction, really.

UrhoKarila

2:20 PM

@nitsua60 Difference between gender & sex?

kviiri

Their gender is meaningless within the game, so it's up to my imagination as a player to decide whether I care about it or not.

nitsua60

@UrhoKarila You forgot the part about "oh, but sometimes I throw useful stuff in there just to screw with people...."

@kviiri Oh I see--you're saying that as a matter of mechanics there's no import, which frees you to assign as you wish. Got it.

kviiri

I don't, really, but when I picture these characters I have impressions of some being masculine, others being feminine, others being androgynous or something else for no particular reason. Just headcanon.

I also picture Yredelemnul (the god of "zombie death", as the source code puts it) and Elyvilon (the healer god who dislikes violence) as siblings :P

nitsua60

(On first read I thought you were saying "gods are so ineffable they transcend our notions of gender and sex" and then following with "but these ones are female to me." Which I couldn't wrap my head around. I mean I can wrap my head around "either" of those notions, but "both" was tricky.)

kviiri

Ah, I see.

nitsua60

2:23 PM

\o/

kviiri

And even in my headcanon, those are just their common forms. They're above the earthly perceptions of sexuality, beyond my comprehension.

(it's amazing how much headcanon I have about Dungeon Crawl. It's practically plotless.)

Maybe it's specifically the lack of canon info that fills my headspace with ideas of my own :P

nitsua60

In my head canon you're crawling around dungeons with a cannon on your head =)

Miniman

Real headcanon.

kviiri

I also picture the universe in Dungeon Crawl to be applecore -shapen. Two opposing hemispheres (the world and Pandemonium), separated by an inpassable void except through tunnels that reach through (the dungeon). The middlepoint is the Realm of Zot.

@Miniman Wouldn't want to be in his crosshairs.

3

Miniman

@kviiri Oof, nice.

UrhoKarila

2:39 PM

@nitsua60 GROSSLY \o/ INCANDESCENT

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