@fredhicks other direction!
The Great Wall of China
The Good Wall of China
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The Average Wall… https://twitter.com/i/web/status/883750289315999747
@doppelgreener Pumpkin brownies, I think I've mentioned before: take your favorite brownie-in-a-box mix, figure out how many cups of wet ingredients (oil, water, egg) it calls for. Put in that much, or a little more, pureed pumpkin instead.
Comes out best if you spread it thinner in a slightly larger pan than ordinarily called for, but cooking time and temp stays the same.
After cooling off, and thinking about the problem, I spoke to my GM. I asked him if he could explain to me the purpose of placing the explosive in my characters new bionic arm, in the terms of whether it was simply to force some other kind of exploration or something from me - investigation etc.
All in all, he said that I raised some valid points about my situation, and agreed to discuss it before our next game.
It was a good discussion, because while it wasn't really any kind of development (yet) it actually proved something I wasn't sure would happen.
Personally, I've known people to get defensive when talking about things like this. Saying "hey, just wanted to talk about one of your new rules", some people would simply retort and get defensive, and likely make it worse.
I think it could possibly serve as a good piece of advice for others too. When people ask questions that end with "talk to them", it would also be useful to describe how to talk.
Specific tools for RPG-related conversations, like setting up discussions about the game outside of game time so there's no pressure to resolve it quickly and return to the game, are quite important here.
But generic "how to talk about fraught topics constructively" advice shouldn't take up more space than the RPG-specific part of a question, and it shouldn't ever be considered mandatory.
We've also had a lot of questions about telephones and magnets and trains, and we decided they're off-topic because they're about real-world stuff which comes up in RPGs but don't require RPG-specific expertise to solve. Not everything that comes up in an RPG is on topic here.
(Otherwise, given the scope of RPGs, everything would be on topic.)
A lot of our social-problem answers boil down to "Treat this like you would if it weren't an RPG."
And it's useful and important, I think, to be able to say that: there's enough weirdness in the RPG community about treating RPG spaces as somehow fundamentally different from all other spaces in terms of social mores, that it's definitely on topic for this site to point out that's not actually how it works.
But we shouldn't feel an obligation to also field questions about how basic social mores DO or SHOULD work except inasmuch as they're about RPG-specific implementations.
@BESW ... i think i need to learn stuff like this.
playing games with the group of friends in Australia Dan and I are a part of has frequently been difficult. We've each got our own issues going on (I'm no exception). There's issues in how we behave with each other but it's hard to identify what's going on that's an issue, where the issue starts and ends, what we can do differently to have a more constructive group, etc. Questions like that could at least help start us talking about this stuff.
> In the same opinion where he uses "jiggery-pokery," for example—just in this one opinion—he uses "eschatocol," "exegetic," "peregrination," "imbrication," "anent" (x2), "independentista" (x3), "spavined," "underbrace," "asseverate," and "jeremiad." He has said he does this to make his opinions more "interesting," but personally I think that's pure applesauce and it gives me the pip. Legal writing is hard enough to read without sending people to the dictionary every other paragraph.
Ok. Maybe I should have realized earlier. Or maybe I should have realized even earlier, but at this point I already realized some time ago and it just came to my mind now because I have been readying "I stop him from doing that" by Angry. (No link, it's tangential and you already know what the problem is just by the title.)
I shouldn't have presented my players with the choice to ally with the BBEG, and the "I punch the BBEG in the eye / I kill him before he does" degenerated into an endless bickering every time one of the players has the possibility to drop an AoE spell that involves the other one.
More than bickering, now that I think about it, is that the player who can cast fireballs likes teasing the other, and he trolls the other by saying he will hit his character, and the other one gets loudly defensive "WHY WOULD YOU? YOU B******! DON'T! ZACHIEL, HE WANTS TO HIT ME, DO SOMETHING!"
And we just generally lose a lot of time.
I guess I'm starting to hate players that, rather than plan their turn, rumble through the character sheet of the character whose turn is just before their own, trying to find something that might advantage the team. Or players that keep shaking dice in their hand while talking aloud instead of just rolling. Or players that roll and then get lost in tangential discussion instead of counting dice.
@Zachiel the first one sounds like what people tend to call quarterbacking, it's a somewhat domineering interaction that has a high tendency to occur in certain collaborative games like Pandemic (that board game about disease control)
basically one player decides to take charge and tell other players what they should do with their turns. the quarterback has the best intentions in mind -- they want to work with everyone to succeed against their common obstacles -- but the end result is the other players feel like their agency is undermined. it's supposed to be a collaborative game, and there's a reason that quarterback isn't just playing all four player positions at once, so they should butt out -- or so others may feel.
paradoxically quarterbacking reduces cooperation. the person subjected to quarterbacking wants to feel like they're still in control of their own turn, not just a proxy of the quarterback, and feels like choosing the option suggested to them means they don't have control anymore. they want to be making their own decisions. so they are likely to decline the quarterback's suggestion, even if it's the best or only good choice available, and will pick any other option at all.
@Zachiel Hmm... reminds me of all those times my friends and I just got together to have "battle royals" with either purpose-made characters or entries from Deities & Demigods. Maybe you need some sessions that are dedicated to scratching that particular itch?
@doppelgreener Have you tried doing what we sometimes do, making time at the end of each session to explicitly ask each other what we want to see more of, and what we'd like to change in the future?
Obviously it may not hit the nail on the head for social challenges, but it may open a space for being more comfortable about analyzing the group dynamic.
If you can't figure out individually what you need to talk about, it's helpful to get into the practice of talking to each other about what's going on.
It might help tease out the real issues, and at the very least it gets you used to talking about this sort of thing so that when you DO hit the crucial bits it won't be a structural shock.
alright, I'm still pondering on my arena quest line
actually opinion on the rules of engagement and victory for the arena
during the actual fighting I didn't want outright killing of the foe to be the only goal. Iin this particular game I was thinking maybe soemthing like they need to protect a trinket on their person from capture by the other party, but I wanted to add a bit more flair while still keeping these fights fast and high suspense.
any changes you might make, players can still beat the other person to the ground and then take the trinket, but that opens themselves to the machinations of their foe for more turns
how about you @Miniman, ever had any memorial days at the arena?
@Skyler Not really - I'd recommend looking at the things people have traditionally done for sporting events, though. "Fight to the death" is one of a bunch of things.
For example, in our modern equivalents of gladiatorial combat, they don't try to kill or even beat their opponents unconscious - they're awarded points for their attacks, and are trying to score the most points.
@Skyler Yep, exactly - both historical and current.
If you've ever read Voyage of the Shadowmoon, there's a great duel scene in there where the contestants finish the duel by explaining why they should be declared the winner.
@Skyler Well, (again drawing on media rather than my experience), in Golden Sun only one character participates in the tournament, but the others all use their magic to cheat help from the sidelines without anyone knowing.
And if you haven't played Golden Sun, that one I very much whole-heartedly recommend.
