It was a two-session adventure with some inconsistency in companions between sessions, but we had the Doctor, Leela, Ace, K-9, Kamelion, the Brigadier, Sarah-Jane, and Tegan.
The Doctor regenerated at the end of the first session (Leela was mind controlled into attacking him), which meant he changed one of his aspects and another player took over for him.
@Ryan Grr... this GM needs to expand their mind, IMO. Rather than "you need a healer" I wish they'd have said "most parties have some provision for healing. What do you think's going to be different/harder/easier/more fun/more challenging about your Bb/Mk/Mk/Mk party?" and then let you-all decide whether to stick with it or make changes.
Yeah, I couldn't come up with diplomatic way to put this, but it sounds like you're doing something you don't want to do and aren't going to enjoy, purely because you feel you have to.
And, to be even less diplomatic, I suspect you'll find the character you're planning on to be rather ineffective, which is frustrating and likely to make you enjoy the game even less.
@trogdor Which is awesome. But I've also had plenty-a-fun playing an all-martial party that trounces over some things and has to run like all get-out from others. Ditto for an all-caster party =)
@Lord_Gareth Think of Doctor Who as a Council of Ricks Rick, except that the Council of Ricks has vanished from spacetime so he's on his own now, doing things the Council would have wanted.
though again, even without thinking you need healers all the time, I still find it a useful and even fun thing to be the guy who has the most powers for making my companions health bars go in the other direction XD
We feel no need to test our belief that garlic has no effect on magnets, just as Plutarch felt no need to test his belief that garlic had an effect on magnets--and we feel this way for exactly the same reasons that he did.
@nitsua60 A garlic magnet situation is one in which, for reasons of science, garlic is attracted towards a single point and rapidly accumulates at that point, leading to a garlic pile situation.
the ironic part about that is that I can think of a realistic way for garlic to affect lodestones -- by screwing up the ferrous iron/ferric iron balance in them :o
@ACuriousMind For about five years, the shortest campaign I wanted to run was five months long. These days if I tried to run a single continuous campaign with the same characters every session I'd have exactly one player. We're much more successful with episodic play where each session is reasonably self-contained.
By using episodic formats in systems with quick character creation and low overhead for learning the system, friends can come and go as they're able instead of never coming because they can't commit to consistency.
@Miniman Sorry--Americanism. (A)dvanced (P)lacement courses, nominally suitable for college placement, really a moneymaking scheme from a for-profit institution in New Jersey. That's hoodwinked millions of HS students into thinking they must have AP scores.
@Shalvenay I've got no problem there. It's the willful misrepresentation by the generating corporation of the likelihood that those scores will actually be considered by the matriculating school I've got a problem with.
(Also, tortuous sentences. I have a problem with those, evidently.)
@BESW Ah, okay - we mostly play board games at these occasions. I find that each of my RPG groups has a delicate balance of player mentalities that doesn't lend itself well to people dropping in and out at will.
@nitsua60 ah. because the alternative path is to have a specific post-secondary institution count specific secondary courses from specific secondary teachers as post-secondary credit
@ACuriousMind Yeah, that's something else we've had to consciously work on. One of the reasons I like hosting RPGs is that it's a microcosm of social engineering, all about tuning environment to create a desired atmosphere.
@trogdor Some of the courses--perhaps even many of them--are rather excellent. They're 90% overlap with what an expert teacher in that field would consider a strong course in the subject, where the other 10% is along the lines of "oh, I might not have gone there, but that's okay, too."
I've had similar challenges, both with getting group buy-in to try new systems and with getting people to feel comfortable GMing anything at all.
My solution was a long-game process of changing the "landscape" of how people at the table viewed their role in the game. I didn't set out to delibera...
It's the marketing that says "students, this is a college course you're taking. You'll get college credit or placement for it, at almost all universities" that drives me crazy. 'Cause it's just not true.
@Shalvenay True, which is also a tough program to get up and going. But it's been my experience that if you have the possibility of a system like you describe, you're in much better shape going to your academic dean freshman year of college saying "I have these 18 credits to transfer in from the University of Missouri" than to go saying "I took six AP courses, what can I get for them?"
(I believe that many states do offer such programs through their flagship universities. I know that all five states I've taught and studied in did so. But the prevalence of school-utilization of such programs isn't something I know much about.)
@Shalvenay I don't know good numbers, just anecdotally that year-over-year my college counseling staff is telling me that they're accepting less and less, and that more universities are saying "no thanks" to the whole thing.
@Shalvenay Cool. I was lucky enough to go to a HS that had decided back in the 80s that AP seemed like a strange racket and went with the state university co-op system instead. So I had twelve credits, not four scores to bring to college. Almost a free semester. Could have been more, but my interests lay elsewhere in HS.
@BESW It absolutely is like that! I run a few games for the freshmen at my university every year and that is so much more difficult than playing with the players I know, but it's also absolutely worth it.
@ACuriousMind One really cool thing I've found is that, because the group dynamic is always a little different depending on who's around, we get to play many more different KINDS of games than if the group was static.
@trogdor It's not always dramatic, and people are generally easygoing. But if we were always the exact same people we wouldn't have as much impetus to say "ooh, let's do a new thing."
There's a difference between shooting an idea down and just not considering it seriously in the first place, but they both wind up meaning you don't get as much variety in your gaming.
@Lord_Gareth Prolly not good, then. And I certainly want to be in bed before that time's up. I'm around a lot. (More than I really should admit, tbh.) Ping me any time--I really am curious.
@BESW mk, I only asked because I never connected her mentioning how much she liked Ghostbusters with the fact that it was only the three of us when we were talking about Ghostbusters
@BESW Sounds like you're talking about the mental nudge that comes from saying "hey, a different mix, what game should we play?" As opposed to how easy it is to say "hey, it's the group that was playing X--should we keep going with that?" And suddenly the discussion's anchored, even if everyone in either situation is perfectly willing to try different things.
@nitsua60 @Miniman @trogdor we've had a cleric every single time and the week before this happened we had more people show up and played with 8 players. 2 Monks, 1 Rogue, 2 Clerics, 1 Wizard, 1 Barbarian, and 1 Hunter. As far as the DM knew the Hunter and Rogue were going to be missing but everyone else checked in they would be there.
the DM was expecting a huge party and instead there were 3 of us - all melee.
@Miniman though I've sometimes gone ahead and played the utility role with a mind to "I'm'a sit back and not get a ton out of playing this character, but am going to free up half my mind-space to watching table-interactions, learning about GMing, &c." But it's definitely a choice I'd rather make than have made for me.
I had a lot of fun as the cleric. I enjoyed it as much, maybe more than my Monk. I had wanted to play a Gnome Caster originally in a different group that I'm no longer playing in. So this gives me the ability to do that
originally I wanted to do Gnome Paladin but I think Gnome Cleric/Warlock will be a riot too. Praying to false deities and manipulating everything I can
Yeah, I'll look up that accident again tomorrow, not sure what's going on and if the weather for the approach was enough or not. Will give the usual info flail another day to settle down. Very sad to see both souls lost
@nitsua60 I can totally relate. My wife only wants to play fantasy RPGs, and preferably only D&D (also, preferably a version we have physical books for - which means any version up to 3.5... which means 3.5...) I'd still like to go back to Shadowrun some time. And try other systems, eg Dungeon World, D&D5
It's my vague notion that "souls" is a common term in aviation, where other fields might go with "persons" or "lives." Is there any sell-known reason why that came to be the parlance? (@Shalvenay @KorvinStarmast)
Why don't they just say 'people' on board, why souls? What is the origin of this term? I'm thinking it comes from sailing as I think I've heard that term in reference to crews out at sea, but I'm not a sailor so I don't know.
So, "souls" effectively communicates the number of living humans on board.. I was trained to say that when I began to fly in the 80's, and recall some SAR ops where a boat reported souls on board. (Sail boat in a storm off of France, we were assisting with rescue of people while waiting for the French coast guard to get there).
@Ryan Clerics can be fun. I never take healing as a focus, it's just something else he can do. I usually focus on turning, buffing, summoning, melee, and/or general casting.
@nitsua60 @KorvinStarmast In case that requires some unpacking: Radiant damage is rarely resisted, there's some monsters with vulnerability to it, and it has special effects on certain enemies (mostly undead).
@nitsua60 the other monk in the group didn't realize that Monk's main ability is stun locking opponents. It'll be interesting when he hits level 3 what path he takes
@Ryan While Shalvenay is technically correct about a deity not being an option for a patron, Garl is thematically suitable and it would make sense for your character, so if you like the idea, ask your DM about it.
It's not like there's any reason for him to say no, after all.
gotcha. can we talk for a bit in a spoil-lair about your thoughts re the dungeon itself, or have you put off deciding whether you want to DM it or not until our schedulation is taken care of?
@nitsua60 My original idea was to be the proner so that our martials slay stuff. We only have one spell caster. Until I get to sixth, non physical damage is the wizard's cantrips and the occasional paladin smite.
@Shalvenay DMing is off for another month, this weekend, when I was supposed to have time to mess with R20, we had surprise guests. Ate most of the weekend.
Next weekend is mother's day and perhaps movng sister in law to Houston. Grr.
@KorvinStarmast for me -- next weekend isn't going to be great by any means, but next Sun might be manageable -- still debating whether I want to take my DM bag along with my laptop
One of the reasons I want to do Sun Soul is that this character's Dad is, as I've figured out, a OoTA/Green Knnight.
But his back story takes us to the part of the world where I'll be DM, and this gal is not in play.
Sun Soul is with other group, or Open Hand, yeah, We are four raids into the campaign, two of us at 3d level, the others at 2. (Our DM will now and again give Bonus XP for those who show up and run the others ...)
Our barbarian's RL sched just changed again, we hope he'll be able to play.
oh and btw -- I was talking with a fellow RPer IRL today and he gave the RPG.SE quite high praise for being such a useful resource -- it's his "go to" whenever he's googling some RPG thing
But most LEDs are blue with a phosphorescent making them white or whatever, and I need not-blue.
Blue is calming, but mentally stimulating. The goal is to have illumination sufficient for a guy with failing eyesight to get around at night without disrupting his circadian rhythms too much.
Studies indicate red is probably best for that, but I think red will remind him of working in darkrooms and I don't want to trigger that when he's supposed to be going back to sleep.
@Lord_Gareth It's fine. Make sure your post would work without the link, and include warnings if the content is in some way risky (NSFW, seizure warning, etc).
But as supplemental material it's dandy.
@Shalvenay You do realise that you're talking over my head, right?
LEDs are like fluorescents in that the light-generating thing requires something other than ordinary mains AC, and there needs to be some adapter-thing between the AC line and the light-generating thing as a result
I wouldn't know a COTS constant current driver if it bit me on the hand, much less where to get one, and ordering light bulbs over air mail seems like an exercise in masochism so I'm limited to local stores anyway.
I prefer LEDs over incandescent or fluorescent, and there's an A19 60-watt equivalent Philipps in red or orange at the Home Depot down the street. So I'm deciding between orange or red.
I get what you mean. I think you might benefit from narrowing it down to one of these:
> Sometimes this is done by luck or to reveal a weakness of the foe for later in the story; other times this happens in a circumstance where the main part of that foe's strength is not necessarily relevant to the problem, or in which constraints on the goals of both sides make timing or daring more important than raw power.
That's three different narrative situations, and while they're similar enough the question shouldn't get closed as too broad, picking one would give you tighter answers.
Hmm. An answer up to my standards will take much time and research.
There's techniques, mechanics, and playstyle considerations and variants. Many of them are already explored in various games so we don't have to reinvent the wheel.
Second, of course, is simply allowing PCs to manipulate the situation to their advantage through narrative influence, creating advantages, and making declarations.
Which comes in many flavours depending on how much you want to pre-determine the NPC's strengths and weaknesses or let the players invent them.
@BESW quick aside: a while back you helped me settle on The Fold for my book club suggestion. We had the meeting over the weekend, and it was very well received. A few of the people have already started reading his other stuff. So, thanks!
But my feminist friend was there with her usual lament that it's too rare for a book to have a man and a woman simply be friends, instead of a slightly awkward love interest
But there's not even a hint of tension or temptation, which is notable.
I've been trying to read The Expanse and getting very annoyed by the protagonist for similar reasons to why I have so much trouble with 14's main character.
In the second book White-Bread Protagonist Boy, who started and stopped two interplanetary wars, has the hottest girlfriend in the solar system, captains his own private warship, and is the only human the aliens will talk to, gets depressed because the aliens tell him they didn't choose him to talk to because of anything special about himself.
[throws book across room]
Why, O why couldn't Naomi have been the main character?
I'm mostly annoyed because in an RPG, he's the one guy in an otherwise skilled and experienced team who just took all the luck-based abilities and started calling himself captain.
Yeah, they've said in interviews that they're trying to show a society where your place of birth is the new reason for prejudice, where ethnicity and culture has blended to the point of being a non-issue.
Which is interesting, it's the sort of thing I liked the Imperial Raadch for exploring.
But the authors... well, they've never read writingwithcolor.tumblr.com.
@BESW Bleh. I didn't like the way the Ancillary trilogy (though I only read the first one) was written. Super-smart AI is too dumb to learn gender cues to even try to make educated guesses? Nope.
That was definitely a culture thing. It worked for me because of the schema it touched.
But yes, the first novel was... more stilted. That was kind of the point, but the second two are easier to read.
Unfortunately "James S. A. Corey" haven't actually thought out what their future diversity would look like, or how people in it would think about each other.
Somehow a man with eight genetic parents in that culture is a white Montanta farm boy, and a woman whose ethnicity is difficult to identify is so weird and exotic it's worth mentioning repeatedly. When they describe large groups of people it's clear the author's thinking of them as mostly white, and cultural fusions like food and music are at best two cultures mashed together.
@Christopher I'm having trouble digging up the canonical link just now, but there are thousands of RPG systems out there. They range in overall size from many thousands of pages (third edition D&D) down to just a few hundred words (Roll For Shoes and the 200-word System contest)
@Christopher a good mastery of the system you are playing is never a bad thing, on any system. That said, you don't have to read the entire book, but doing so will help you during the game.
[grin] It's inspired by an episode of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2012 where a giant space-kaiju comes to Earth looking for her baby that the Turtles adopted because they thought she was dead.
@NautArch I feel like overall the show is probably better executed, but they've changed or removed some of the most awesome moments and setpieces in the books for no apparent reason.
Like, they trashed one of best jaw-dropping one-liners from a scene, which really hammered home just how paradigm-changing the moment was. The rest of the scene is there, but it's a fraction of the OMG that it could have been by instead drawing out the moment of revelation over two more scenes with really heavy-handed storytelling so by the time they reveal it, the audience has already figured it out and is impatiently waiting for the main characters to catch up.
btw, anyone hoping to answer the stochastic influences in games question, Richard Garfield's bookCharacteristics of Games may well have exactly what OP's looking for. (But it's been 5 years since I read it, I don't quite remember.)
Hey excel wizards: is it possible to set up a list to re-sort randomly every time the sheet is opened? (I'm sending a list to some people, and would like each person to see a different random order when they open it.)
With a smaller party, everybody should be getting an extra share of xp so they will be leveling up faster. The difference is that a large party will get easier early combat, and will level up slower so the later stuff should be relatively correct. The smaller party will level up faster, but will have tougher combats that will eventually even out in theory
@NautArch Well, I'm looking for advice to do so. I think they do general overviews of how to do it, but in detail the adventure books assume a party size of 4, I believe.
I haven't run one either, but I feel like if the difference is just one person in either direction, the CR calculations are so wishy washy anyway that you don't need to change anything
In your home games, you can do whatever you want of course. But for coordinated/official games, like Adventurer's league, you pretty much have to play by the book, so you can't change anything in those situations
Why don't they just say 'people' on board, why souls? What is the origin of this term? I'm thinking it comes from sailing as I think I've heard that term in reference to crews out at sea, but I'm not a sailor so I don't know.
I feel that legitimate downvoting is disincentivised by the rep penalty. What are the reasons this penalty exists?
