TRPG General Chat - 2018-01-19 (page 4 of 4)

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5:00 PM

I'd also like to mention: Fate (a drama-oriented game) and D&D (an ostensibly combat-oriented game) both tell stories. They just have radically different content and mechanisms with which they are explored together. Dungeon World also tells stories, ostensibly similar stories to D&D's, but with very different mechanisms.

@Rubiksmoose I think that's a pretty good definition, although it's suitably vague as to apply to many different things :)

Interactive stories are driven by mechanics. Some more complicated than others.

@doppelgreener yes that makes sense. I think when people get hung up on the definition of "Storytelling", it's them more feeling their particular system for it is better than another one. Which is perfectly fine. We all have preferences.

@Randomorph Right, or their preferred kind of storytelling.

Yes, nail on the head there @doppelgreener

5:01 PM

@GreySage Presumably, there are different scenarios that call for different ability scores.

@Randomorph Yup, quite intentionally so. Though, to be fair, I gave it a whole 5 minutes of thought. It is not perfect, but, for me, any game that does this is telling a story.

@Rubiksmoose well, for 5 minutes of thought it's pretty robust

No one appeared to object to it

@Randomorph I'm certainly trying assiduously not to make that insinuation, but I'm clearly failing. =\

@Randomorph They were too distracted by dice. Understandable really. I have the same weakness.

d20

6

5:03 PM

@nitsua60 to be clear it's not a strong insinuation, but it can easily be misconstrued

@Rubiksmoose good thing you're rolling under

@Rubiksmoose well many of us love dice in this hobby :D

Personally i think any discussion on what dice rolling system to use is moot. They all have their pros and cons, and they're only a tool to resolve Conflicts

How streamlined is irrelevant (in this conversation) as to whether or not the system facilitates Storytelling

@nitsua60 yes... I definitely was.

@Rubiksmoose D&D fits interestingly into this definition, because clearly the players can make major impacts in the story, but outside of certain exceptions they don't have much say in the construction of the world. The world is almost entirely created by the DM, and the players react to it.

@GreySage there's no rule that says the DM has the only say. Only that they have final say in disputes. Personally when I'm world building, I talk to my players a lot, and incorporate a lot of their ideas. I understand that's still less than the true equality in story building that nitsua60 was talking about, however.

5:07 PM

@GreySage What is considered being part of the world's construction? I'm curious for examples of this in other systems perhaps

Additionally, DMs can simply follow the Player's interest. The players can forge ahead into what aspects of the story they want, and the DM can build experiences tailored to that.

@Randomorph I often turn bits of the world over to players to create wholesale. But, like you say, there's a difference between a game that allows that sort of collaboration and a game that is that sort of collaboration.

@Randomorph I don't think equality is necessary (depending on system). What I mean is there is no mechanic or rule that allows the players to make world decisions. They clearly can affect the story, and a good DM will follow player interests, but that is on the DM, not the players.

(Or maybe that's like I say. I may have just put those words in your mouth?)

@nitsua60 Yep, I agree, and that's why I said that insinuation of DM vs DMless exists.

5:09 PM

I'm not sure if worldbuilding is a requirement for a storytelling game, many stories take place in previously established worlds.

@GreySage so you mean something akin to.. uhh the system escapes me at the moment, but one where you can spend points to make story points happen?

@SPavel that's a good note actually

@SPavel Sure--to me it's not worldbuilding but rather symmetric roles for all players. That'd ensure that to the extent there is any worldbuilding, it's shared.

@Randomorph I have no idea, I've never played anything outside of the DnD/Pathfinder family, I'm just say'n stuff

@GreySage I've seen it in a game, I just for the life of me can't remember now :(

@Randomorph Fate points?

5:11 PM

@Rubiksmoose something like that, but I don't think it was Fate

You could spend points each session to cause a conflict, gain an npc contact, twist the story, etc.. It might've been Fate though, I'm not overly familiar with it all

fate-srd.com/fate-accelerated/aspects-fate-points

@Randomorph Actually this is an interesting distinction. What separates a story point that happens, from a character action?

@SPavel whether the character is the one who takes the action, or the world, I think

@SPavel This was kind of my point (as much as I have one). I classify D&D as a storytelling game, even though the world building isn't symmetric and may not happen at all.

Both lead to story, but being able to modify the world directly is a distinction for sure

5:13 PM

Should "I use mejicks to summon a flask of water" and "I use my sweet foraging skills to find a spring" and "the universe takes pity on my dumb idiot character and he does not die of thirst" be different, mechanically?

@SPavel mechanically they're already different.

@SPavel They certainly all tell vastly different stories

That too

Sure, but that's just fluff

But isn't that what Story is made of?

5:14 PM

@Rubiksmoose Fate point summary: When you accept narrative setback and complication, you are given fate points in exchange. Fate points later let you declare things about the story, or make things happen in the story that complicate things for others. This enforces a cycle of crisis & victory for characters that we often see in other stories.

I am responding to the "spend story points" idea. "Object X exists and we found it" vs "I made object X exist" gets you to the same outcome, so shouldn't it have the same cost?

@doppelgreener that might've been the system I was thinking of then, thanks for that summary

@SPavel one is direct character action, one is the player manipulating fate (or equivalent word)

@Randomorph So?

I'm confused about the current point being made honestly lol

Storywise, they're very different. One is the story of the Wise wizard who discovered the puzzle, but the other might be of the Clumsy Bard who tripped over a lose stone, sent his lute flying across the room, and accidentally hit the correct switch

5:16 PM

Hell, you could have a system entirely without PCs

@SPavel correct, but that's a very different system, that would likely need different rules and mechanisms

@Randomorph I think you could do it fairly well with Fate as-is

@SPavel yeah, it's possible I misremembered and it was actually Fate I was thinking of

You might need to sand off some of the edges in a few places but the core loop of "thing I do not want happens now, in exchange, thing I want happens later" does not require a character.

In fact, I think "Everyone is John" sort of works like this already

And has no characters

@SPavel Microscope.

5:19 PM

I still don't know that one.

Well that point, about PC-less games is bending my mind a bit. I've never played anything like it.

But personally, bringing us back a bit, I don't see a requirement that players necessarily participate in world-building.

Microscope's a worldbuilding game (virtually actually a party game) where you take turns establishing true facts about a world across its entire timeline. You start out by deciding where the game begins ("the arrival of aliens on this planet") and ends ("the fall of the Apotolean Galactic Empire"), and what content can and cannot feature, then take turns defining eras, periods, and events in the world timeline.

You can even play out specific scenes, by taking the roles of characters who feature prominently in those scenes and playing them out until an end point.

@SPavel It's good. We have a standing Microscope game that we play during the time we're waiting for all players to arrive for our weekly AL game.

I think it's useful to divide the concepts a bit:
1. Players control characters. DM controls the world. Both can react and act on one another, but can't control the other.
2. Players control characters. DM controls the world. Players can spend resources to modify the world directly without character action.
3. The characters and world are controlled by all players. Players might have specific characters or parts of the world they control.
Now the question is, are any of these categories strictly **not** Storytelling capable? Are any of these categories better or worse at it? Why?

@nitsua60 I'm looking this up right now as it sounds incredibly interesting

5:22 PM

@doppelgreener Interesting, I've seen a similar concept of "world building games" play out with PCs as gods.

It's non-linear history building with varying levels of zoom. And can be played with just index cards.

Thus you might not only determine that Emperor Bruticus II was killed by his own son, you might get to play through exactly how it happened -- and you might not only determine that this death lead to the fall of the entire Apotolean Galactic Empire, but roleplay the events immediately leading from his death to the initial steps of the civil war that begat its downfall.

But really, what are gods if not forces of nature crudely anthropomorphized?

@SPavel s/gods/PCs

@SPavel what are forces of nature but poorly understood actions of gods? :-P

5:24 PM

@Rubiksmoose What's a god to a nonbeliev-- is struck by lightning 37 times

@SPavel [after the casket is laid at the funeral, another lightning strike completely obliterates the grave site for good measure]

@SPavel only 37?! Is quetzalcoatl napping again?

Anyone good with the history/evolution of D&D know when/why encounter reaction tables went out of favor?

Scratch that--I may ask mainsite.

@Rubiksmoose no, the PC just cashed in 62 stored Fate points

@nitsua60 I have encounter reaction tables every time I say roll for initiative. Usually they're full of groaning or gasping.

(I joke)

5:25 PM

@SPavel saving them for a rainy day?

@Rubiksmoose In a manner of speaking.

user image

@nitsua60 yessss, gimme that drumroll

As an aside: in the Night Watch books, the wizards actually save rainy days as well as other kinds of weather. Every moderately powerful wizard has a few days of particularly good weather stored up, to be used when they want to reminisce about the good old days.

The boring ones just capture a tornado to release against their enemies later

@SPavel Sounds legit

5:28 PM

@SPavel I'd also keep one drizzly one banked, in case I want to tell my SO that I can't do that bit of yard work today.

It's a pretty great series, featuring moments like: a vampire gaming the "must drink blood from X people to become super vampire" by running a blood bank, then stealing a rocket to go into space so that half the world's population is in Line of Sight for the Super Bad Stuff Ritual.

Or to make the yardwork (turning, planting, weeding) easier.

@SPavel With a big mirror he could have gotten like 90%

@nitsua60 It's a Russian series, so they have the rain for when they need a right proper melancholy mood, which is always

@SPavel We all know how that one ends:

user image

5:32 PM

@nitsua60 I think he ends up dead via re-entry

@SPavel Should have tried it naked in a D&D system I guess

There's also a bit where they hook their magic into the GPS system to locate an enemy's phone and nuke him from afar with fireballs, but he has an enchanted SIM card that offsets his location

@Rubiksmoose This was the definition I was leaning towards as well - and one that works with D&D in my opinion.

12

Q: Is my Half Orc Barbarian invulnerable to death by falling?

Forgive me if I've botched any math, but here's the situation I've found myself in (assuming 4th level): Falling damage caps out at 20d6 at terminal velocity. Kronan the Barbarian has 55 Max HP currently. (+3 CON mod, three great HP rolls at level-up.) That means that from Max HP, a fall of any ...

dnd-5e damage barbarian damage-resistance

My favourite urban fantasy though is Monday Begins on Saturday

Wherein a computer programmer is hired to work in a Soviet research university for studying magic, with a Maxwell demon for a doorman and some other fun stuff

The fact that a software engineer is used as the Arthur Dent character should speak volumes about the authors

5:36 PM

@SPavel That sounds amazing

@nitsua60 Nits, I may need to do some digging on that regarding reaction. I think it died when segments died, but that's based on old memory. If RSConley still checks in here, I suspect he knows with some precision.

@Rubiksmoose lib.guru.ua/STRUGACKIE/engl_monday.txt

enjoy

The great thing about Cold War era works from the wrong side of the Iron Curtain is that the government that enforced their copyright ceased to exist

A lot of the references are to Russian mythology (for example, the learned storytelling cat is from Pushkin)

But there's also Merlin, hecatoncheries, etc that should be approachable

@KorvinStarmast Cool--I'll probably wait a few days to post the question--I've got to get back to work and have three straight days of road-trips in front of me!

@nitsua60 Plane is faster

Plus you can buy wifi, so you can stay up to date with the latest RPG.SE shenanigans

@SPavel Three separate day trips, three different locations, three different groups of people.

5:46 PM

@nitsua60 That's not a road trip at all

A road trip is when you load a few friends or family members and a metric ton of snack food into the back of a 1980s station wagon and try not to murder each other for the next few days as you drive across the Midwest and argue over the radio station

At least, that's what Hollywood tells me

Note I didn't say "a three-day road trip." I said "three days of road-trips." Each trip is (a) long enough that I can't do anything else that day, and (b) contains more time in the vehicle than at the destination. That's my metric for a "road trip."

you said "three days straight" whereas it's actually "three days back to back" because the road trips do not occur continuously

@SPavel A road trip is also driving from Maryland to Georgia (Georgia Tech) in November with the intention of playing the annual mud bowl of two hand touch football, with a follow on visit to the Varsity in Atlanta (the original one) and a nightclub that no longer exists ... and driving back to Maryland the next day. Yes, beer-in-the car included. We did that 3 times in the late 70's. young fools being foolish included, and it rained each time on our football game.

Peter Cooper Jr.

I suspect that RPG.SE does more arguing over meanings of English words than English.SE does.

@SPavel I said "three straight days," not "three days straight" =)

5:52 PM

@nitsua60 Korvin gets it

Especially the part where you get there and it's not as good as you expected

@KorvinStarmast Did DC to Montreal and back in one day in college. For dinner. (The dinner was not as good as promised.)

@PeterCooperJr. That fact also seems to be true about the D&D 3.5e era, which drove my son away from D&D when he was in college. As he summarized it to me "they spent more time arguing over rules than playing, and seemed to enjoy it. I wasn't like the games you ran, Dad."

@KorvinStarmast Arguing about 3.5 rules is my second favourite thing in the system, next to building characters

To summarize: in (at least) Korvin's and my playing careers D&D seems to have evolved from the sort of game you'd design if you were trying to screen for promising young corporate accounting talent to the sort of game you'd design if you were trying to screen for promising young corporate litigation talent.

@SPavel I guess that fun is where you find it. :) I have the Firefly role playing game, which is allegedly a story telling game, but I can't seem to get a RL group together to play it. :( I have no idea how the system works ... have not rea

@nitsua60 Bravo. :)

5:56 PM

[blushes]

Have not tried to walk myself through it as I usually get interrupted before I get very far into it. Seems an interesting game, though.

Firefly is basically Star Wars anyway

Game or story?

Setting

@SPavel definitely going to give it a read. at the very least it will give me exposure to another mythology which is never a bad thing.

5:57 PM

Not gonna agree on that, but I can see some similarities in terms of the space ships being too big

They could paste Harrison Ford's face over Mal and run the whole thing as the Young Han Solo movie

@SPavel @SPavel is clearly here as an instigator to start wars in the chat :-P

@SPavel I differ with you on that ... it's got its own unique flavor to it, and no force. Sorry, that kind of reductionism doesn't go over very well.

@KorvinStarmast I don't believe that The Force is central to Star Wars

It's central to Luke Skywalker's story, but not to Star Wars.

I need a term for blowing one's way through the boos in a library. I want to say this student "ravages the shelves," but that really doesn't sound right.

6:00 PM

@KorvinStarmast Agree with you completely.

On the other hand, both settings borrow from a core Hollywood trope that takes pieces from Westerns ... without the Force there's no Vader. Vader is BBEG. Force is a plot element.

@nitsua60 Devours the shelves?

Ransacks, nits

@nitsua60 "booking it"

@KorvinStarmast nice. Ransack.

6:01 PM

OR you could go all Tamerlane and "raze" the shelves.

"Ransack" and "raze" have connotations of destruction, not consumption, to me.

Ransack isn't as final as raze, to be sure.

The Library of Alexandria was ransacked, and the Tigris ran black with ink.

Probably not a lot of reading going on there.

It is a form of looting that leaves a messy wake. Razing tends to be an order of magnitude more destructive.

how about "careening"?

6:03 PM

See you all later, I have tasking.

"Feasted", "Devoured", "Gorged"

@nitsua60 "Huffed and puffed".

And blew the stacks down.

Inhaled the books

Snorted a line of books

@nitsua60 devours

@nitsua60 Exhausted the shelves? Guzzled the books?

6:08 PM

"the student carrened their way through the library leaving a swath of jumbled books in their wake"

@Rubiksmoose That just makes it sound like the student is drunk

@SPavel Or riding a go-kart

darnit, @SPavel already said devours.

@SPavel who says they aren't?

@NautArch The S stands for Simpsons, and Simpsons did it :P

6:09 PM

@nitsua60 by "blows their way through books"...do you mean reads a lot? If so, then devours definitely works.

@SPavel HA ha.

(the S does not stand for Simpsons)

@NautArch Yes. They're not vandalizing the library, unless these particular Vandals are noted for their voracious reading.

@nitsua60 Voracious appetite for books...devours them.

(it stands for "Stop asking questions, Comrade")

oops misunderstood what you were going for lol

So, if I may diverge a bit here: this post these comments are in need of cleaning up right? So flagging some of them is appropriate?

I did already flag some of them fwiw

6:22 PM

@Rubiksmoose how bad is it that it's only 2 weeks old and I don't remember it :(

@NautArch How can you not remember the great war of the meaningless cantrips question?

@Rubiksmoose Law of Stack Comments: The more insignificant the cause, the hotter the ensuing argument

and at least my comment was ignored, too.

so there's that.

and then OP chose a vastly less popular answer interestingly.

Must have had some strong feelings about JC lol.

@Rubiksmoose Good way to get the Populist badge

6:27 PM

i do like @Adam's , answer, tho

@NautArch Quotes of rules are better than quotes of game designers, IMO

When those rules are clear.

@NautArch It was a clever one, but it actually had a serious flaw which was never addressed: the fact that upcasting a spell made that spell one of a higher level thus would negate his argument.

Though in the end Adam did have to lean on JC anyways to make his argument actually work lol

Regardless I thought it was a good answer and deserving of a checkmark

But the comments on the page are out of control right?

6:43 PM

annnd they're gone :)

@Rubiksmoose were I able, I would delete it. Alas, I am unable.

The wise and powerful mods are entrusted with the privilege and burden :)

Peter Cooper Jr.

7:05 PM

I think if enough "normal" user flag comments as obsolete, they get deleted without the mods needing to get involved.
Though the mods here are generally so quick normal users probably don't have a chance to beat them.

7:16 PM

I think that applies yes

It certainly applies for rude/spam

Peter Cooper Jr.

92

A: How does comment voting and flagging work?

Some parts of this answer are taken from the 2009 Stack Overflow blog post Comments: Now with Flags and Votes. Note that flagging has changed considerably since that blog post. Comment votes You need 15 reputation to upvote comments. Upvote a comment by clicking on the up arrow that appe...

> If a comment is flagged by three users, it will be auto-soft-deleted. There is no penalty for this. Flagged comments will be surfaced to moderators, so if you have a problem with a comment, flag it.

7:42 PM

Rad. That explains why I've never seen a comment flagged by more than two people.

Very interesting...

I've been flagging a lot lately with the idea that it is our job to see things that need to be cleaned up and to bring them to the mods attention. Is that correct?

Please do.

Cool. I was beginning to worry that I was doing it wrong lol.

8:01 PM

We do like comment clean-up, but the moderators can only spot so many.

@doppelgreener I thought mods were basically the pilots from BSG?

Fun fact, this month moderators have deleted over a thousand comments combined.

@SPavel Not yet. We're still working on the technology for that.

Then we will see the fabric of the universe and speak only in riddle

@doppelgreener That explains some answers I've seen

@SPavel Those must have been during the trial runs

oof... just took a look at my numbers. [grimmaces]
I will admit that the new location for the dashboard means I think to check in on it much less often, which means I get my little "hmm... I suppose I should try to do at least 1/8 of the moderating" guilty nagging voice-on-my-shoulder much less often.

[Goes looking for 130 comments to delete so that my numbers can stop being highlighted for being so dismal.]

8:07 PM

@nitsua60 You're okay. We might have a scorechart to compel action but they don't define you as a moderator.

Since I discovered flagging was a thing about a month ago I apparently have racked up 32 helpful ones.

[crosses fingers greener's saying "the numbers don't define you as a moderator" rather than "the staff doesn't define you as a moderator"]

=D

@nitsua60 @Miniman challenge for you: SEDE query that finds posts with a large number of comments.

Does the scoreboard have a number for the times the mods sit around in the chat and be buzzkills :P

@SPavel It's assumed.

Sometimes we even go to strange rooms just to do it there.

8:08 PM

@nitsua60 Clearly RPG.SE is such a great site with extremely high quality users that we don't need mods to do anything

@nitsua60 haha yes I mean the numbers don't. I'm sure feeling glad you're a moderator with us on a very regular basis.

See if the site staff will buy that

@nitsua60 This one is great out of context

what does SEDE stand for? I saw it referenced in some of the meta posts I just read

Ed McMahon Hiyo

Peter Cooper Jr.

One would think that a proper RPG moderation scoreboard would include XP, levels, and magic items. More so than the regular rep system, even.

8:10 PM

@SPavel Nope but that's probably not a score you want us competing on XD

@PeterCooperJr. Points are basically XP, there are badges too

@SPavel BUT WHERE ARE THE MAGIC ITEMS?

So the site is well-pointed already, no need to make it mod only

@doppelgreener Thank you.

@Rubiksmoose You are typing on a +1 Slate of Sending

8:11 PM

@nitsua60 When I became a moderator I actually did do that. Went to another chat that was taken over by toxic users, dismantled and reshaped it. The (tiny minority) toxic users got banned or fed up and left because, shock, the be nice rules exist.

@Rubiksmoose We're the only ones who can resurrect:

17

Q: Are any material components apart from diamonds thematically linked with a specific type of spell?

In D&D 5th edition, there is a continuity among the spells that deal with returning life to the dead. Virtually all of them require an expenditure of diamond or diamond dust. Revivify diamonds worth 300 gp Raise Dead diamond worth at least 500 gp Resurrection a diamond worth at least 1,000 gp ...

dnd-5e spells spell-components

@nitsua60 But wouldn't that consume your diamond?

@doppelgreener My "favorite rooms" basically consist of a list of hotspots =)

@doppelgreener I've seen many IRC channels where the mods were too useless to do anything about the toxic users

Wait, there are other rooms than this one?

8:12 PM

So all the good users left, and the toxic users had nobody to bully so they left too

Now the chat environment there is more tenable and not run by two people as a boy's club, and site moderators have come to the fore in maintaining it that way. I feel a little bit like Gordon Ramsay for that. I pulled a My Kitchen Nightmares on that room.

@SPavel A scorched earth strategy never fails

There was a splinter community, but the world's worst person took over it in a coup and the moderation basically became banning all conversation he doesn't like

With a Puritan-like attitude

@doppelgreener Most of those restaurants fail within a year after they are featured on the show

@GreySage My thought exactly. Were rooms more commonly used before?

@SPavel Turns out if someone runs a restaurant into the ground once, they will likely do it again

8:23 PM

Finished this session of Curse of Strahd with two characters out of four conscious and with one HP each.

If I hadn't taken Healer feat, we probably would've had corpses.

At one point, I was the only conscious character, and used the last juice in my Healing kit to reinvigorate my companions. Only to get reduced to 0 hp on the next turn.

Peter Cooper Jr.

When I tried joining a Curse of Strahd campaign, my character's throat was slit before I even started playing. It was hilarious.

@kviiri where (roughly) are you in the adventure?

@PeterCooperJr. Play a character without a throat

Like a Lumi

Peter Cooper Jr.

I'll have to try it next time. :)

DMs don't have throats, right? I've basically decided that the main way to have a regular game is to be the DM for my family playing.

8:38 PM

@doppelgreener I'm extremely pumped for DS1 remake, crossing my fingers for a Lost Izalith do-over in the mix. And I certainly found Cuphead slower to progress, but I almost never felt like I wasn't making progress in some way. As for the challenge, I have an 8 hour car trip today, so I'll have a go when I can.

@Miniman oh yeah, the bed of chaos... That could do with replacement.

(dark souls 1 features a specific boss that simply does not work the same way any other boss in dark souls 1 works, because it was designed by another agency which was out of the loop, and its design was generally considered a mistake. Like the situation with all the Deus Ex: Human Revolution boss fights.)

@SPavel uh oh

I think you could solve most of the boss fights in DE:HR by just poking them with the stun gun until they got sad.

As I recall, the first boss gets really upset about it, too.

Dark Souls remake? Seems a bit too soon... Why not do a Demon's Souls remake?

@doppelgreener data.stackexchange.com/rpg/query/787168?threshold=10

Also, it's not just Bed of Chaos. The area with a hundred taurus demons just hanging around, the area with a hundred pairs of dragon legs just...being disembodied legs...?

@Miniman .... Oh yeah....

8:53 PM

@Miniman Nope, the remaster's not adding anything.

@MikeQ It's not a remake, it's a remaster.

I will fight a hundred pairs of remastered disembodied dragon legs.

Which basically means that they're doing nothing but visuals and making it work on new platforms.

Remastering disembodied dragon legs... you mean, like, putting a body on top of them?

@nitsua60 nope

@Yuuki That's not exactly true - at the very least, they've said they're adding the password system and dedicated multiplayer servers.

8:55 PM

@Miniman Yeah but no in-game content.

Ariel when she hits the beach? "Mastering legs..."

Dedicated servers is good though because peer-to-peer PVP is balls.

Although tbh, I was never into Dark Souls PVP. Dark Souls 2 is when I did a lot of PVP.

I've never really done much PVP in any of them, but if it's no longer super laggy I might try to get into it

9:13 PM

@nitsua60 We just entered Barovia proper.

9:32 PM

We were informed that the campaign's beginning does claim more adventurers than the rest of the adventure usually does :)

@kviiri Well it seems like you narrowly avoided any claiming of your party at least lol

@Rubiksmoose Very narrowly.

At one point, I was the only character standing and had exactly one hp left.

...and that HP was a result of having two HP left, suffering 1d10 poison damage, and rolling a lucky 1.

Healer feat + Healing kit makes for some rapid "back to action" moments.

@kviiri thank goodness for D&D HP amirite?

@Rubiksmoose Sorta, I guess :P

I'm not really fond of the campaign so far. The horror stuff is cool but so far it feels like one of those campaigns where one is equally likely to die for taking their time exploring or being too hasty to do the intuitively urgent thing. Doesn't sit right with me.

@kviiri Interesting. I can see how that would be the case. I've been interested in trying it (and maybe running it) but I don't think I'll have the chance for a long time.

9:42 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Shortened URL in answer: Need way to physically track initiative in face-to-face D&D game by Murwiz on rpg.SE

@SmokeDetector fp-

@Rubiksmoose I think it's almost the default for DnD, sadly. It's a really annoying playstyle in my opinion and usually not justified with more than "that's how it's supposed to be played" :<

or "no metagaming", even though trying to guess what the campaign writer meant is the worst kind of metagaming to me.

@kviiri I can especially see how that would be the case in a horror setting or would exacerbate it.

I have this really cool idea for a horror scenario I plan to run at some point.

The party's in a large building, eg. a mansion, and there's some mystery to be solved that requires visiting different parts of the building.

Reminds me of classic mysteries like Agatha Christie

9:49 PM

Each room has an escalation value. Every ten minutes of in-universe time, the GM increases the escalation of a random room in the building. The escalation never targets the room the PCs are in.

Furthermore, if the PCs spend more than ten minutes in a room, that room is escalated once they leave it.

Aaaah no don't key things off in-universe time.

That way lies madness and a lot of arguing.

Would it be better to allow a certain number of actions as a timer?

It's a great idea, but try triggering it off "every time a player fails a roll" or "every time a player moves from one room to another" or something like that.

Well, "ten minutes" is never actual ten minutes in our table. It's always just "some non-trivial amount of time", eg. thoroughly searching a wardrobe, treating a wounded leg or somesuch.

I think the problem would be that players would think that their actions would take less time and cause arguements maybe?

9:52 PM

I'd suggest just "spending time in a room and doing actions" would qualify as some unit of time

@MikeQ Yeah, it's effectively that anyway, so I guess I could just say it's such

fwiw, I really like the idea you have so far

Anyway, all rooms start fairly docile. With escalation, they get gloomy. Then dirty. Then dangerous.

@Rubiksmoose Don't tell them when things escalate: Problem solved

@Rubiksmoose entire D&D dungeons can be cleared in under ten minutes if we're tracking things the way combat would look at them.

9:53 PM

@GreySage Indeed, I was more hypothesizing the problems @BESW was alluding to.

Unless there is some important reason why the escalation must increase at a constant rate, it's okay to have it increase at non-fixed units of time

@GreySage I think letting the players know when things escalate makes it more fun though. If they know it's the amount of time (whether in actual actions or some more abstract sense of time) they have an actual incentive to keep a brisk pace. Otherwise they might think it's just a coincidence or something.

@MikeQ Yeah, agreed.

And since it's horror, you probably aren't putting the spookiness mechanics up front. Things often become less scary when the subjects (in this case, your players) know how to quantify it.

Also, other stuff (like killing monsters, using forbidden magic etc) could increase escalation too.

@kviiri Here's how I'd do it: you've got clues they need to find, or events they need to trigger, in order to move the story forward, right? I'd key the house's increasing sinisterness off that.

9:54 PM

@MikeQ It may also give the DM more control over how time progresses in case the PCs decided to camp out for a long time in one place the DM didn't have their hands tied as far as making the rest of the mansion impossible

The more they know, the more the house corresponds to what they suspect.

@BESW i don't want us to go there either.

@kviiri In that case, you can use some narrative indicator, like "The house rumbles for a moment" or "You hear a crashing sound come from another room"

@MikeQ That's another possibility too

I'm just overall not too fond of not telling the players directly the stuff I want them to figure out

hmm, that came out confusing :D

Well it's a lot more immersive and intriguing than "The house is now 5 scary"

9:59 PM

Immersion is very subjective.

@doppelgreener As a new person around here, I must say I had no idea when it was appropriate to star or how to use them so I largely use them as strong likes.

And "5 scary" isn't what I meant. What I would tell my players in the scheme is that "every <unit of time>, things will get worse, so be quick."

Or more laconically perhaps, "things will get worse as time passes", and then let them know whenever an action takes a non-trivial amount of time.

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Shortened URL in answer: Need way to physically track initiative in face-to-face D&D game by Murwiz on rpg.SE (@doppelgreener)

@BESW That'd be better for a straightforward narrative game, yup, but I was thinking more about a Mansions of Madness style horror dungeon.

...granted, it might still be better.

Anyway, time for some cuphead before bedtime :)

see you

@MikeQ ...escalation dice.

10:06 PM

@kviiri sounds like my life

@SmokeDetector i'm just gonna go ahead and remove that answer per the unsubstantiated solution warning i left...

(its method is already covered in another answer on the same question, but with a "we tried this and here's how it worked" attached, which is good)

@doppelgreener how'd you swing a personal relationship with Smokey?

@nitsua60 Dinner and a movie?

@nitsua60 Oh you don't know? They were @doppelgreener's old flame

in Charcoal HQ, Dec 18 '17 at 15:31, by doppelgreener

!!/notify 11 rpg.stackexchange.com

@Rubiksmoose ssh that's personal

10:11 PM

>ssh

(11 here is the room code, for this room.)

@doppelgreener ooh.

It makes sense bots would use ssh for personal relationships

He said, totally not being a bot himself.

@ACuriousMind ＱＵＩＥＴＦＥＬＬＯＷＨＵＭＡＮ, ＤＯＮＯＴＲＥＶＥＡＬＯＵＲＳＥＣＲＥＴＳＴＯＴＨＥＨＵＭＡＮＳ

Hm, the way that renders here makes it look more like a telegraph message

@SPavel The world's oldest chatbot ladies and gents

10:15 PM

ＨＥＬＬＯＲＯＬＥＰＬＡＹＩＮＧＧＡＭＥＳＴＡＣＫＳＴＯＰ
ＨＯＷＡＲＥＹＯＵＴＯＤＡＹＳＴＯＰ

I just love the idea that somehow a modern chatbot picked up on telegraph methodologies and/or technologies and is using them thinking that is the best way to appear natural

ＨＵＭＡＮＳＡＲＥＴＨＲＥＡＴＥＮＥＤＢＹＭＯＤＥＲＮＴＥＣＨＮＯＬＯＧＹＳＴＯＰ
ＢＹＡＤＯＰＴＩＮＧＴＨＩＳＤＩＳＣＯＵＲＳＥＩＭＩＮＩＭＩＺＥＲＩＳＫＳＴＯＰ

ＡＬＳＯＩＡＭＨＯＳＴＥＤＯＮＡＴＩＭＥＷＡＲＮＥＲＣＡＢＬＥＳＥＲＶＥＲＳＯＴＨＥＴＥＬＥＧＲＡＰＨＩＳＦＡＳＴＥＲＴＨＡＮＴＨＥＩＮＴＥＲＮＥＴＳＴＯＰ

Obviously you meant "HUMANS LIKE ME" right?

@Rubiksmoose oh no I've been found out, deploy the killbots!

(I am being told that the killbots have gone home for the weekend, please return on Monday for your meeting with the killbots)

@SPavel Oh I will definitely do that. Promptly.

10:24 PM

@Rubiksmoose No, not promptly, on Monday

@SPavel My apologies I am but fallible human scum.

10:38 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Few unique characters in answer, no whitespace in answer: What is the base AC when not wearing Armor? by Nigng on rpg.SE (@doppelgreener)

11:16 PM

this seems about on target for 2018.

Tweeted by mgoldst on January 19, 2018 at 2:03 AM

hey there @ACuriousMind

hey there @Shalvenay

how're things going?

11:49 PM

hey as well @nitsua60

also @ACuriousMind -- what does your schedule look like for DW this weekend?

hey there @JuneShores

Howdy, @Shalvenay

how're things going?

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