@B.S.Morganstein Yeah, I can only do it a little, specifically in Pathfinder and specifically because I spent all summer a few summers ago reading most of the pathfinder books cover-to-cover in my downtime (i.e. breaks at work while working manual labor unsupervised)
@B.S.Morganstein That's very true, especially if you want player buy-in to the storyline. The GM can chain them together, but they should be reading the players and the player characters' actions to determine where to go next. It is a learned skill, and one that requires a light touch to wield properly.
@T.J.L. Yeah exactly, and I was finding that more often than not a hands-off approach to DMing was really useful, allowing the PCs to drive the story for themselves, with me occasionally stepping in to rule on a rule, provide a DC, or run an encounter
@BanjoFox Most people hate true-random when true-random is applied to the things they can see. Such as the shuffle-feature on a media player, or on accuracy calculations in a vidya game.
@BanjoFox Referencing original settings rather than my arbitrarily defined setting is treasonous citizen. Treason is punishable by death. Have a nice day!
@nwp -- this chat is normally used to discuss actual questions/problems. While I appreciate, and gladly participate in Paranoia/Alpha Complex shenanagins, I feel that it gets out of hand on occasion. Thus potentially detracting from other, more on-topic conversations.
On the other hand, if it truly does not bother anyone, then game on :P
@godskook A comment re: complexy vs depth: Most professional game designers consider complexity a price they pay for depth. Many try to minimise that cost as much as possible on all stages of design.
Well, I'd reward the ingenuity of trying to cast the spell on a person, so any person might count as an open container (people have remarkably many openings); living, dead, or variations thereupon. But only once(ish). No cheesing it. You get the creativity to pay off once, but no more (or at least not often).
@Szega Anyone seriously suggesting that a person is an open container knows it's super cheesy and liable to not work at all... but I'll give it to you once since it's creative. It's more of "it doesn't work ever, but GM Fiat says it works this time"
@Delioth Well, they then went on to calculate the logic of shoving a tube up their foe's anus to make them explode, and then I promptly left our Discord server
I had this friend, Juan. Juan was a burly, sometimes-bearded hispanic dude who drove a really old car. Well maintained, but old.
He was on his way home from the game store one night, and he gets pulled over by the cops. Cop walks up, sees Juan, sees the rifle case he has on his backseat.
@Szega That too. Magic says it doesn't work, but the GM likes the creativity and says it can work once (which the player can choose - I probably wouldn't force them to use their "once" at that time immediately)
Nervous, hand on gun, the cop asks him what's in the rifle case. Juan's reply? "Officer, would you believe me if I told you 'small green men with guns'."
"Nope," says the officer, "why don't you show me... very slowly." Juan climbs out, slowly. Gets the case out, slowly. Puts it on the trunk, slowly... and pops it open... slowly.
@Delioth Yeah, magic is weird. After all, at an atomic level, there's no difference between the carbon in your molecules and the carbon in coal. But living and nonliving is a very important magical distinction.
@Szega Eh, my players have never cared so much for consistency in rulings - they know they asked to do something super cheesy and that it shouldn't work... but we like to play our games a bit silly so consistency goes out the door in favor of fun rulings. I know most play games a bit more serious, but sometimes it's fun when the Earth Genasi's home used to be the High Priest of a dwarven city
@Szega sometimes you have to stretch the consistency. maybe not to ruin the laws of the world but be kind of flexible.
but it highly depends on the group. i've been at tables where the players are going to lit torches and fetch the forks if the GM is too much "flexible" in the interpreation of the rules ;)
@jwacalex I've never seen a GM who was "too strict" ruin the game, solely on "strict". I've seen "arbitrary"+"strict" do it, but never "too strict" on its own.
@BanjoFox Well, it depends on the set. The one with a fixed cast between me and a couple of high-school buddies is silly (I GM). The set that's more West-marches style is a bit more serious (though we're still not super-serious), if a bit tongue-in-cheek. I'm in another that might be serious or might not be (we're only one session in... but it's also Dark Souls themed... but I know the guys we're playing with and it doesn't seem like it'll be fully serious).
And we make sure to keep the serious moments intact- just some details get odd. Like determining one session that the warrior's house is sentient and talks (or at least grunts) at times. And then three sessions later realizing that "Rock" (the house) used to live near this other city and was High Priest until he... left.
@doppelgreener - Blackwing Palomino does have their own version but they are CRAY-spensive Blackwing point guard and I rather like the tapered end (AND COLOURS !:D!)
@doppelgreener -- I KNOW RIGHT! I was, almost shamefully, browsing for fancy-pencil things to buy and saw them. Then i was like "nah... let me check Amazon." Then boom "Amazon Add-on order" :D
Today's reminder that Your Fantasy World Is Not Saturated Enough:
The Danakil Depression in Ethiopia is one of the hottest & most extreme environments on Earth & is nicknamed the 'g… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/890919783897718784
With follow-up reminder that ancient civilizations liked technicolor even more than nature does:
To The Black Sea And Back: The Late Antique Dura-Europos 'Shield' Map https://sarahemilybond.com/2017/06/27/to-the-black-sea-and-back-the-late-antique-dura-europos-shield-map/ via @wordpressdotcom
@Delioth See, here's the thing that most people don't recognize. We didn't invent colors in the last century, we invented the ability to see colors in the last century.
People were painting in bright reds and greens in ancient times, they just couldn't see the reds and greens.
@godskook here is "das schwarze auge" the black eye a bit more popular than d&d. and at some points DSA/TBE has some kind of rule fetishism. you can find a book for each city in the whole world.
@Yuuki I'm at a symposium right now with a number of people whose names you'd recognize from talking-heads-on-tv, if you're into that sort of thing. Half an hour before this morning's sessions started they were all typing away furiously either updating rewriting their columns (NYT, Bloomberg, WaPo) or re-jiggering their appearances (MSNBC, CNN) because of last night's surprise.
I'm a high school teacher. I never thought I'd see Nobel Prize winners typing furiously to get their homework in on time the same way I do my students!
user15026
I guess everyone is prone to waiting til the last minute ;)
user15026
Or, well, dealing with the effects of other people's last minute scramblings, more like
@Ash Or both. It made me sympathize a little--I'd come in this morning not having taken twenty minutes to look at the news, rather having breakfast with my kids. They were all in the position of "if I don't check the news before going up, I could be blindsided by a well-posed question."
@godskook McCain voted some way on something. Still haven't quite put it all together yet. (By not yet looking at a newspaper yet. I'll get there, but I have my priorities!)
@BESW YES!!!
It's... disorienting.
(sorry to shout)
@BESW IIRC (which, given the last colloquy we had, may not be the case as it's Gaiman) a grim or many grims feature.
