I just question whether you're really going to find "I fire my shortbow for a miniscule amount of damage" and "I hide behind a tree" interesting in practice.
> Baby face: Even through puberty, you managed to maintain the physical appearance of that of an youngling. Even while covered in full plate, wielding a greathammer, people still find you as threatening as a 7 year old. Disadvantage on Intimidation, advantage on Persuasion, and an additional +2 asset if you use the "puppy dog eyes"
We had a game when he kept trying to intimidate people, but didn't roll any higher than a 3, I believe. I suggested he may have "baby face" (the conundrum where your face still looks "young). He then proceeded to crush everyone with a greathammer and Angels of Light
@Clarus_Nox So you want the DM to make the game vastly more complicated for everyone, just so that you can make an argument that your armor should be cheaper?
@Clarus_Nox Well, there's 3 ways they might react. "At least you won't need healing so often", "why should we spend party gold on such a useless character", or "who cares?".
i only notice that he never spends anything on healing items, he gets them from rest of party and usually avoids getting targeted by running away when inititive is rolled
I am a new DM and am trying to create a mini campaign for an all-night D&D session. The problem I keep running into is how hard should I make the campaign, or what my players will be able to handle. I have heard people say that the CR is related to the level of the party, but I have heard others ...
The point I'm making is that you've already set a standard for what quality level you're willing to allow content from that's far lower than what you're worried about now.
my homebrew race of being an lythari elf that basically makes me a werewolf without a hybrid form and full control of my other form is not exactly the same as a feat that gives me an insane advantage to requesting things from npcs
being able to change into a wolf at will vs +1 to cha, prof in persuasion(expertise if you already prof) AND If you spend 1 minute talking to someone who can understand what you say, you can make a Charisma (Persuasion) check contested by the creature’s Wisdom (Insight) check. If you or your companions are fighting the creature, your check automatically fails. If your check succeeds, the target is charmed by you as long as it remains within 60 feet of you and for 1 minute thereafter.
@BESW True! And the same is true for UA. But if you're evaluating content individually, on its own merits, "should I allow a UA feat" doesn't make a lot of sense.
@nitsua60 I hear his cousin was kidnapped by giant robots.
The second #FAE fantasy character: a dwarven runepriest. #RPG #Fate #DnD https://hyvemynd.wordpress.com/2017/08/08/fae-fantasy-dwarven-runepriest/ https://t.co/kJcdghYBnU
@Miniman I will say that I liked reading that UA a lot more than many of the others. It was much less "here's us trying to fix ranger again" or "here's more feats/classes/archetypes, which you've already got more than enough of" (admittedly, that's a bit of my anti-expansion in there) and more of "hey, let's actually think about what we're trying to do here.
@Clarus_Nox This is the point we're making. It doesn't really matter what you do/don't currently have. The fact is that you've already opened the jam jar once, so there's no reason why you can't open it again. Ultimately, asking us isn't going to mean anything, if you and your group only want to taste the jam. We're saying "if you've tasted it, just dig in, why not?"
I would never use it, but I did like the notion of tying in to (and deepening) the "tier" concept as a simple structure to hang PCs, XP, worldbuilding, encounters all on.
@Clarus_Nox For example, if you think the current ruling is a little unbalanced, there's nothing stopping you from altering it to make it fit your game better. The wonders of homebrew are as such.
@BESW Could be heavily influenced--I'm pretty sure he was very happy with a lot of the "4e said it was going to do a thing, and dagnabbit it did it!" bits that I think I've heard you mention, too.
4e had some pretty aggressive modifier escalation, but it was very predictable, so you could actually have a table of "for a party of level X, Y target number will be easy for people who specialized in the thing they're rolling."
When I was making skill challenges, I could make 'em generic for any level ("easy DC here, hard DC here") and just plug in the numbers for the party when we got to a particular challenge.
That sounds like a thing Angry's recommending for 5e. Think about things (tasks/checks/saves) in the paradigm of "does this 'level' with the party." I.e. the L10 party trying to convince a guard to the castle of the same lie that they used at L2 to get into the town should scale with their level: higher-level party will be interacting with better-paid guards, and all.
Door to tavern is always DC10 to break down, no matter the party's level. Door to castle is 10+APL: no matter their level when they hit it the door should be anticipating people of their level trying to do it harm.
Yeah. There are times when a DC should be static as a party advances, but there are many times when something should be the same amount of challenging no matter your level--and for games with aggressive modifier escalation, that means escalating the DC too.
@BESW But D&D out-of-the-box doesn't ever get into talking about things like game design, for all that even when running a published adventure we're ad hoc game designing all the time.... So it's nice to see a UA article that opens up these sorts of notions.
@BESW Hmm... without moving my head I can see my kids' sandbox out the window, my cats' litterbox, a meta post asking if we should have a sandbox for workshopping questions, and a published adventure I'm starting to prep which bills itself as very sandboxy. It's rapidly losing meaning here, too =D
@Shalvenay I don't think they have to worry very much. It rains multiple inches every day. Those living out in the jungle drop it from a tree and move on. Those living in town do the same thing the simians humanoids do. Whatever they do.
@Miniman That previous link was for a ref that my friend wanted. Doing a commission of my D&D characters. The link I intended obviously didn't copy properly lol
@Adeptus Mos Eisley got nuked a few months ago, permanently, with the admonition to take some time out and consider how a new chat room could be made which avoids the recurring pitfalls of the previous one.
> "A Man Said to the Universe," by Stephen Crane A man said to the universe: “Sir, I exist!” “However,” replied the universe, “The fact has not created in me A sense of obligation.”
Long story short: one of the kids writes a(n offensive) joke that becomes widely regarded as the funniest joke in the world. When the kid is on a late-night show (Conan, I think?) and tells the joke Kanye West (having slid down the couch) doesn't get it. That becomes a running gag, and Kanye keeps flipping out....
@nitsua60 That wasn't what I was concerned about - some people take "I don't watch X" very seriously. Not that I thought you'd be one of them, I was just making another "nitsua abusing his diamond powers" joke. Which, in retrospect, wasn't even vaguely obvious.
Bringing it back, I'm imagining Godzilla's super-hearing carrying puns down his way, and him just lying there on the sea-floor fuming, getting madder and madder at not getting the jokes, until... release the Straight Man!!!
> Googler: on your turn, you can use your action to research any given topic on your smartphone. Advantage to all INT or WIS based checks
Rollnir: True Neutral Legendary Artifact. On your turn, flip a coin. Heads: you gain advantage. Tails: disadvantage (applies to normal advantage/disadvantage cancelling, and does not stack). After the attack, roll a d20. The roll of the d20 determines a random effect (if you had advantage, the user can control the effect, if not, the effect is unaligned)
4
This list ranges from a fireball, to a summoned creature, to a 5 foot-radius blast wave
@Ben forged by the nefarious warlock Gari Gy'Gax, and ultimately killed most of its own wielders.
@Miniman We used the Revolution variant that BESW came up with based on that, and wounded up rolling up a Supermega Hydrazoid that had enough heads and power it rivalled MegaThirteen. And....... we rolled perfectly ordinary monsters. However... we didn't lose!! We also destroyed the island before Supermega Hydrazoid could win. :D
The Fate World Patreon returns, with Tara Zuber’s PRISM: http://drivethrurpg.com/product/218544/Prism-o-A-World-of-Adventure-for-Fate-Core?affiliate_id=24139 https://t.co/MFhQDjRtly
@Ben I'd add: If you spend 10 minutes using this feature, you can automatically succeed on any Intelligence check unless the DM rules that the piece of lore is in the second page of google results, or is otherwise unavailable.
good* for handling food preparation** and burglars***! (** has totally unpredictable effects on food; not FDA-approved. *** has totally unpredictable on burglars; not security certified. * may kill chefs; not necessarily actually any good.)
Specifically, mice that are culturally and/or biologically compelled to fanatic devotion.
Their lives revolve around complex rituals inspired by the object of their devotion, be it a tree or a person or whatever. The colony in InCryptid have attached themselves to a family, worshiping the family's members for generations.
They have events like The Feast of I Swear Dad I Will Kiss The Next Boy Who Comes Through The Door, and engage in rituals with their gods like the Pact of Privacy For Food.
(The latter means that if the mice stay out of your bedroom that night, you'll give them cheese and cake in the morning.)
The family shelters them partly because Aeslin mice are an endangered species, partly because it can be nice to have your own personal cheering squad, and partly because Aeslin mice have impeccable oral tradition and act as a kind of organic black box for any family member who dies on a mission--an offshoot of the colony always goes with family members, and the survivors return to tell everyone else what happened.
(Since the family is dedicated to cryptozoology and is wanted by an international dragon-hunting cabal, very few of them get to die of old age.)
The first book I read was about a young woman of the family spending a summer in New York, and she gave her branch of the colony a Barbie Dream House in her closet, which they redecorated to look more like an Ewok village. Every time she comes home there's a welcoming party to shout "HAIL!" and wave little banners.
Oh, was there grumpiness involved? I don't usually read the entire transcript and it seemed to me they did adjust the constitution score as recommended here.
@BESW <- @eimyr In that one I was just thinking that there's no singular D&D attribute that in being either very high or very low would inherently mean a character would be more or less inclined to be intensely devoted to something.
(I'm not sure what the potential trouble button is here that's being referenced either, or what the can of worms is as kviiri put it, so let me know if I'm pushing it so I can un-push it)
An oft-quoted wisdom in my circles is that getting something "playable on screen" in video game design is an important milestone one should try to meet as soon as possible. Contrary to my usual way of designing the model first and then getting bored before ever writing an interface!
You would be very wrong, as art is expensive, difficult, often commissioned by people who have a expectations not followed by understanding of what is necessary.
At the moment I've reached a point where I'd like to talk about my game, but there isn't a symbol, logo or piece of art that can accompany the communication. This seems like a great idea to make it go unnoticed./
Also you should not try to make your game known until it is done. You get free coverage by everyone interested in your type of game exactly once, because it's new and newsworthy. And people will see it and want to try and buy it. And then they can't, because it isn't done. Then you finish the game and say "hey everyone, it's done now!" but nobody cares because it was already covered and you have to pay tons of money to get people to look at it again.
@nwp I'm sure it's good to have a name and some visual element, like a logo, or a design for how your title will look like as early in the process as possible. I think from a marketing side of things consistency and appealing to visual memory is a great way of making sure your game is recognised and remembered.
@eimyr I am not sure if we are on the same page here. I mean literally scribbling on a piece of paper yourself a bit. Not something like "half done art"
I think all of this stuff should be done iteratively. First you just scribble on a piece of paper yourself while you make the first steps for a prototype. Then you get some mildly good people you know to make some sketches while working on making the prototype somewhat playable. And then you switch to the high quality stuff and try to get people hyped.
@nwp Yeah, the Early Access tradeoff. I'm not thinking of "HEY EVERYONE LOOK AT MY GAME" intensive campaign, but I've seen successful buzz generating talks about WIP games, where elements of audience participation and regular milestone updates make for a pre-campaign interest
(I hope everyone here assumed I'm talking about TTRPGs, not video or board games.)
Getting art early would probably be counterproductive. Game designers need to work on playable prototypes so we can work out what the game should do and how it should feel, and at a certain point we hit on something and it begins to solidify. At that point it's important to start looking at aesthetics (art being a category of that, alongside typography, colour schemes, prop design, naming things) and it should similarly be started rough because it's likely to substantially change.
One sad thing about early access games is that any criticism of them gets hopelessly crushed under the waves of "it's not finished yet!", even if the issues are issues of poor design instead of poor implementation.
@eimyr If you're at a stage where the game aesthetics are solidifying that might be a good stage for that. Equally important to conveying product identity is an evocative title.
@doppelgreener Well, I'm nowhere near where game aesthetics should be considered, but my creative process assumes I have a very good idea of the atmosphere and aesthetic goals.
In a way, I think I should start thinking about building the product identity with any means available.
@eimyr "Game aesthetics" in the sense I'm using it includes atmosphere in addition to the things you can see or touch, though maybe that's unexpected and I'm being obtuse in this usage. It's just at a certain point, the game mechanics are going to start generating a sort of feeling around the game, a sort of way the game gets experienced on an emotional level, and it's at that point we start seeing the aesthetics emerging.
@doppelgreener Ah. I have a good idea what that feeling should be and I'm willing to tinker with the mechanics until the specific feeling I have in mind is generated.
@eimyr That is the opposite of what I learned. I learned that either you have a good product and marketing will work itself out or your product sucks and no amount of marketing will save it.
@eimyr That's great! So in my mind, the creative process is to tinker with mechanics until we begin to create the game experience we want. I'll add a caveat that's not the only way to create a game, it's just the lens I like to use when creating a tabletop RPG -- to me, they're about creating a certain experience and set of feelings.
Once our audience begins to feel something like what we want, we're on the right track; if the game isn't generating that feeling, or generating feelings we don't want (such as if Cthulhu Dark created a sustained sense of empowerment) things need change.
Speaking of that parenthetical, the fact Call of Cthulhu can enable the players to feel genuinely empowered and hopeful vs the cosmic horrors is, to me, an experience design error that should be changed. Cthulhu Dark addressed the potential for that bug wonderfully and ensured an evocation of dread and hopelessness.
@doppelgreener Yep. So I have the list of goals to create the desired kind of bleed as well as a second set of goals to deal with at-the-table ephemera and their interactions, which would model how the fictional narrative elements should interact with each other.
@eimyr That's good. So for now when talking about your game, you can just describe its working title and what your game is like and what your goals are. You don't need a thoroughly-branded name just yet or a logo, but you could go for a logo if you like. No logo might be better than a bad logo though.
@kviiri Thanks! I think so too, and I'm sure it's just one of a set of lenses that could be applied to game design that can be used together where appropriate to produce an excellent product.
It's just one I'm very conscious motivates me in my own designs.
I think RPG design has a similar challenge as producing literature: you need to go beyond the evident "what is the novel/game about" and actually think about the emotions you want to evoke while at it. Subject versus theme.
What is the theme, anyway? I know the subject is a group of adventurers who have retired from the active life. But what's the experience you're pursuing?
A group of adventurers retires and finds they're having a hard time escaping the bloody memories of their violent lifestyle? Or a jolly romp about spending all that filthy lucre earned and waking up hung-over in a gutter? Or is it about protecting the magical loot that should never fall in the wrong hands?
@kviiri PCs are small-time adventurers trying to retire, thinking that their moderate riches and local fame will make their dreams come true. However, they are also just a bunch of peasants and feudal society does not want them to succeed, planting obstacles in their way and reminding them of their born-into status at all times. The adventurers might go back to adventuring briefly to replenish funds and fame that runs out quicker than their expected, but each time they do it's awful and deadly
@Secespitus It's a vicious cycle: heroes loot each others' artifacts to keep them safely in their own dungeons, only for other heroes to come rushing for them...
@kviiri A group of adventurers has the idea that looting a haunted crypt will get them a life of comfort, wealth and fame, instead it brings tax collectors, religious persecution and jealous nobles.
@eimyr So the goal for the Players is to live an easy life?
@kviiri Meaning you need the biggest dungeon in the world and the biggest monsters and most effective traps. And the biggest monsters can definitely be found in hell. Or you raise an army. Maybe an undead army because they are easier to handle.
Your are definitely not becoming the next villain this way...
@Secespitus Yeah, each PC would start with a Dream, which describes what sort of an out-of-reach goal they were initially adventuring for. So, a peasant tank character might want to own a fancy manorial estate or a city urchin rogue might dream of captaining a ship around the world.
@doppelgreener (I imagine it would be difficult for some, as I literally designated classism, religious persecution and lack of social mobility as in-game opposition)
@Secespitus They should, unless they screw up by either dying in some filthy dungeon or pissing off too many people in authority.
@eimyr Well also it's about being torn down, losing your hopes and dreams, falling into emotional ruin, and whilst you're down, being kicked some more -- and a struggle to escape all of that fate which is doomed to fail.
