TRPG General Chat

8:11 AM

Hmm. Would you be using a mechanic with a good curve, or something spiky, or...?

Also--do the rolls come at the beginning, the end, or at the moment of greatest drama, or...?

It's a Cortex Prime game, so I'm thinking that the majority of the scene is going to be gathering your dice pool. So you would have a bunch of dice, some Lady Blackbrd style keys that grant dice, and so on, and then you roll them all when you have a full pool from however many different sources you can bring into the scene.

So you get one die from the value that is pushing you to action, one from a key, another from an asset you set up earlier, one when you exploit an opponent's injury, etc.

Then you both roll your pools and the higher total completes their action.

BESW

Oh, cool.

trogdor

that does sound pretty cool

BESW

So you spend the scene "powering up" your pool by roleplaying toward things that get you more dice.

And then the scene explodes.

trogdor

makes sense

JuneShores

8:21 AM

Pretty much.

Sounds a bit like Wushu now that you mention it.

BESW

Hah! I knew it sounded familiar but I couldn't put my finger on it.

JuneShores

Wushu traits are not necessarily a particular category of thing, though, so the game doesn't direct the actual descriptions too much. The quirks of Cortex Prime also add quite a few wrinkles and decision points.

BESW

This sounds promising.

JuneShores

Thanks. I'm doing a similar thing with the Cortex Prime Heroic World Creation Kit, but that's sort of adjacent. Scenes play out more conventionally, with characters dealing with a localized problem, but between adventures the game zooms out for the players and GM to affect the larger world.

It's supposed to be like densely plotted super hero sagas with at least five different sub-plots happening out in the world.

BESW

My head hurts just reading that.

JuneShores

8:35 AM

Where are you having trouble?

BESW

Just the idea of tracking that many moving parts.

JuneShores

Well there would be organizational charts to keep it straight. :P

Though the players wouldn't really have to deal with more than one thing at once. Chase a macguffin, deal with a problem, etc. The system is more about generating story ideas than anything else.

BESW

Hmm. Interesting.

I might be interested in that for my high-complexity Fate campaign.

JuneShores

8:52 AM

It wouldn't be difficult to build something similar for Fate.

BESW

I was thinking about maybe looking into AW's fronts, too? I never quite wrapped my head around them.

Frezak

I'm glad I'm not the only person that couldn't figure out Fronts.

kviiri

Sadly, Apocalypse World 2e got rid of the fronts just as I was starting to like them

BESW

@Frezak The entire Powered By The Apocalypse engine frustrates me. The bits I understand, I don't feel like I need. The bits I don't understand, maybe would be helpful.

JuneShores

I never got much use out of fronts, but I have pilfered bits and pieces of fronts for my games.

Frezak

9:02 AM

@BESW I think it's because AW is supposed to be played in a very specific way, or else it breaks down or just gets stuck. I ran a few sessions of it, and when it worked it was really fun. But everything grinds to a halt when you slip up, which... is pretty bad, for a game.

kviiri

I think the whole countdown thing grew onto me.

My basic instinct, when playing pretty much any game with things that can escalate with time, is to have a countdown or a slider.

RollingFeles

@Frezak Can you tell examples of such "slip up"?

kviiri

@RollingFeles If you don't mind me chiming in, in one AW game we had a GM who tried to railroad us a fair bit. But I wasn't interested in those particular rails, and basically hung out at the bazaar looking for deals while everyone else was hot at action.

Frezak

@RollingFeles Yeah, actually. I asked about here in a question, even. But the short of it was that I let someone Help with a roll, and then couldn't figure out the consequences of an 'only' partial success on the main role, because I didn't ask the Helping player to describe exactly what she was doing to help.

kviiri

Not a very AW-specific thing, I guess, but AW in theory does give a tool to avoid this: namely, not having rails and spinning whatever the players do into drama.

BESW

9:06 AM

@Frezak Thing is, the rails it put me on as a GM... are the rails I usually use anyway. So it was just adding extra complication by making me check to see if I was acting in an Apocalyptic way--which I always was.

doppelgreener

@kviiri it was all a front!

RollingFeles

@Frezak I see. "How" is very important question. I haven't played AW, but I run DW, so I can imagine that.

@kviiri I don't mind. Only welcome! =)

It's really strange to railroad the game, when rules say "hey, it's all about NOT railroading anything".

BESW

And as a player I felt like I had no way to know what kind of risk I was taking with my actions. It was very existential: you don't know what consequences your actions could have, but you have to take responsibility for them anyway.

RollingFeles

So, it's not a surprise that when you fight the rules, the game won't work.

kviiri

@RollingFeles Yea, but tbh it was a collective error in judgment more than the GM's in particular. Basically, we went quite a bit overboard with collaborative world building.

...and that tends to create a lot of pressure on the GM to actually utilize all the content created.

That, too, isn't AW-specific. Beware!

JuneShores

9:09 AM

@BESW Yeah, I hear that a lot regarding the things the rules say to do. For a lot of people, it's old hat. For others, it's a whole new paradigm. For Vincent, it was just writing down how to best run the game as it was played at his table.

RollingFeles

Hmmm. You mean that players created things, that GM tried to use and in order to use them they railroaded players?

kviiri

We had a smallish village in the middle of Arizona surrounded by an nigh-inpenetrable fortress of steel filled with automatic weapon droids, a biolab overgrown with rapidly mutating wildlife, a technocrat faction that managed to maintain a scarce but advanced supply of futuristic weaponry, etc.

@RollingFeles Yep. The big problem not being that concept itself, but that we just went a... bit overboard.

Too much of a good thing.

RollingFeles

I'm newbie GM, but I think that there are aways too many details to utilize them all.

BESW

@JuneShores I'm sure that if I'd gone straight from D&D into PbtA, it would've been a revelation. Since I'd gone through Fate and Lady Blackbird and Great Ork Gods and Microscope and My Life With Master and Dogs in the Vineyard before I got to PbtA... it felt a lot like putting training wheels back on.

kviiri

@RollingFeles Simplicity is often the best, yep.

Frezak

9:11 AM

Has anyone played both the first and second edition of AW? How do they compare, roughly?

BESW

(Doesn't help that my first PbtA was Monster of the Week, which is written as if you already know the engine.)

RollingFeles

It's not just simplicity. I just can't handle all the things and I try to follow the game as players unveil it.

Also, spicing it up with interesting or funny things.

kviiri

@Frezak No major differences. See my answer here.

Frezak

@kviiri Thanks. Wow, what a useful website! :P

kviiri

@Frezak No prob. Actually, you reminded me of an important update I need to make to the answer

JuneShores

9:13 AM

@Frezak That Help roll is interesting. AW is great at onion skinning the rules, meaning you can peel back layers of complexity. But it breaks down completely when you ignore the core layer, which is talking about what the characters do in concrete terms.

Frezak

@JuneShores Yeah, the problem is I had a player that's a bit RP-shy (and bad at coming up with things on the spot), and I was trying to be kind and not push her too much. Apparently, that's wrong and you can only play AW with a specific crowd. Hmmmmm

kviiri

@Frezak So basically, the major difference in hardish rules is that there's a lot more moves.

Many people like it, I guess - after some time, I've realized that I particularly don't.

BESW

As a player I found it difficult to get the GM to know what moves I was intending to trigger, or what my PC's goals were in a scene or behind an action, without breaking out of the narrative "describe what the character does" mode and going into behind-the-scenes writer mode or even describing the mechanics explicitly.

Frezak

@kviiri Which... sounds odd to me. Because I thought the point was to have very broad, interpretative generalist moves that could be applied to anything?

kviiri

@Frezak Yep. I think they sorta dropped the ball there, to be honest.

Not to say all new moves are bad, but as a whole, there's too many of them.

Frezak

9:19 AM

@BESW THat miiiiight be a problem with the DM not looking for move-opportunities?

BESW

No, it was more often the GM not understanding what move I was trying to trigger, than understanding that I was trying to trigger a move.

Frezak

I kept breaking the game (I guess) by just asking the player stuff like "Are you doing X"?
"No, I'm doing Y."
"Cool, roll it."
Which is wrong, I guess.

BESW

That would've been better than just "okay, you're triggering X move, roll it."

Also, I'd often misunderstand the stakes as the GM understood them.

So I'd think I was doing a relatively minor thing that would build to a major thing later on, and the GM would hit me with a hard move as if I'd done the major thing right off.

kviiri

@Frezak IIRC the rules do sort of state that triggering moves should always be intentional, at least. So you're at least correct in asking for the player to confirm if they want their narrative action to result in a move, in cases where it's unclear at very least.

Go Aggro seems to be one of the usual suspects.

Frezak

I was honestly pretty transparent about what I was doing.
In the very first session, I went as far as to list the GM-move options I was taking and results I didn't take but might have been funny.
Because the way the DM works so differently from the players felt a bit disconnecting.

BESW

9:25 AM

The result was that I felt like the most innocuous thing I attempted could screw the party as if I'd done something dramatically stupid.

JuneShores

It's only the GM that needs to never speak the move's name, and that just applies to the GM-specific moves. The players are allowed to name all the moves they like and twist situations to get to one they want, just as long as they're also describing what their character does in concrete terms. "I'm going for Hack & Slash." "OK, but you're going to have to get under the dragon's belly first. if you want to dash under there then roll Defy Danger." is a valid exchange.

BESW

Everybody I'd heard talk about being a PC in a PbtA games made it sound like some massively empowering experience, but I'd never felt so frustrated because I could do things that mattered but I had no idea how they would matter.

JuneShores

Ah, that sucks about the hard moves. Really, they should not have been hitting you with such hard moves all the time. The majority should have been softer consequences.

BESW

I had agency, but it was uninformed agency that felt like blind flailing.

I dunno, maybe the GM thought they were soft moves because he knew more about the situation than I did.

kviiri

@BESW This is a nasty feeling if it's persistent in a game.

Worse, it's not obvious to many GMs.

BESW

9:29 AM

We've worked out most of it after the fact and there's no hard feelings or anything, but it was not fun at the time and soured me on the engine.

I'd hoped being a player in that DW game would help me get over the sour taste of being a GM for MotW, but nope.

JuneShores

Yeah, that sounds like a harsh time. I'm glad I got into it with the group I did.

kviiri

One of my major GM pet peeves is them sticking to "you only get to know stuff that your character knows" paired with the usual "you are completely devoid of any sensations apart from the intentionally-or-not vague descriptions of things I provide"...

trogdor

@BESW well that sucks to hear

kviiri

...especially when paired with the trope that "you should know when to run/how much hurry you're in/how difficult something is"

JuneShores

Yeah, that's all the pits, @kviiri.

BESW

9:35 AM

@kviiri Urrrgh. I am so happy to have finally embraced the idea that my group's default stance could be author/director.

@kviiri ...I'd like to see that kind of GM play a game of Lovecraftesque.

doppelgreener

@BESW some of our best scenes have been entirely driven by using what we know (but that our characters don't) against our characters. :D

Frezak

Well, I think I'll at least try to give 2ed a shot. As soon as I can get some people together. TIMEZOOONES.
Don't think I like the Threat map, though. I *do* like the new playbooks. (even if some of them are just old ones I didn't have)

JuneShores

It's my default stance, too. Actor stance is exhausting, and not in the good way.

RollingFeles

Hmmm. I don't see issue to discuss what player try to achieve in DW.

"How" is very important for fictional consequences.

trogdor

@JuneShores well, even as an Actor you generally know all the stuff that is going to happen ahead of time

RollingFeles

9:45 AM

I thought about trying Burning Wheel and I liked the mechanic about discussing aims and costs before rolls.

BESW

@trogdor Stances.

JuneShores

I've been meaning to try Burning Wheel, but not having a PDF release makes playing impossible.

trogdor

@BESW ahhhh ok it has a specific context applied meaning

very well then

BESW

Yeah, it's a term of art.

RollingFeles

@BESW actually, in about second or third session running DW I became afraid of the hard moves. I try to think carefully about warning player with soft moves before applying hard ones. Still, I need a lot more experience with it to do it better.

BESW

9:59 AM

In my experience as a GM in other systems, I've found that the things PbtA calls soft moves are better than hard moves for the same reason that you don't show the monster in bright light too much.

RollingFeles

I killed one of my players with sudden hard move. And even though whole scene was great and players liked it. And player returned from the Black Gate with interesting deal. I felt that I played unfair.

@BESW well, Adam and Sage make emphasis on that in DW rules.

Or was it "Guide to DW" from some experienced player... hmmmm

So, yeah, as I see it and saw in Dungeon World "classic" materials. It's better to snowball drama with soft moves.

kviiri

My problem with Dungeon World is that I find it hard to do stuff in it that I like in Dungeons and Dragons, but also hard to do stuff in it that I like in Apocalypse World :<

RollingFeles

@kviiri what stuff? :)

I have some issues with Hack & Slash and 7-9 results for some moves. Former issue is the wording (as someone pointed out to me in AW combat moves are better and they help GM more, than H&S) and the latter is experience.

But our group loved fluence of the gameflow between combat/non-combat.

kviiri

@RollingFeles Combat, for one. I really like tactical combat in DnD, and wish the entire game was built around it like 4e was. I also like the brutality and speed of combat in Apocalypse World.

RollingFeles

Actually, the absence of difference between these ones.

@kviiri hmm, it's seems to me that DnD and AW combat contradicts each other, no?

kviiri

10:05 AM

@RollingFeles Yeah, but I like both.

RollingFeles

tactical options undermine speed and crunchiness take away from fiction which dictates brutality.

=)

I see. Hmm. Combat in DW is slower and less brutal than in AW?

kviiri

@RollingFeles Yeah, and cuddliness detracts from seriousness, but still I liked both Breaking Bad and Masha and the Bear. (although I would like to see that girl burn)

@RollingFeles Yep. In Apocalypse World, the average combat is over in a minute or two in table time if there's no dramatic reason to prolong it.

RollingFeles

@kviiri ahahahaa :D There is nothing wrong with loving opposite things. The issue is in combining.

kviiri

@RollingFeles Masha and the Heisenbear.

RollingFeles

@kviiri hmm, can you show me examples? (Recorded plays maybe?) I'm interested in that.

BESW

10:09 AM

@RollingFeles I love that one of the "minor costs" in Fate is just "foreshadow something."

kviiri

@RollingFeles I don't really watch any recorded plays frequently, so I probably can't find an example quickly. But I can try explaining what I think are the main differences...

BESW

Like, you can fail a roll and still succeed, but I tell you that you hear footsteps in the hall.

kviiri

AW doesn't have damage rolls or HP/harm meters for NPCs. An NPC that takes 2-harm is already down if they're not exceptionally tough.

BESW

And oh my goodness Cthulhu Dark is insanely brilliant to do horror by having success almost always be completely guaranteed.

RollingFeles

@BESW the same thing in DW. You can roll 6- and still succeed with your aim, but you'll be helluva sure, that hell will break loose soon(GM move: Unwelcome truth).

kviiri

10:11 AM

AW doesn't also have a "miss" option for "Seize by force".

BESW

@RollingFeles Not really. Unwelcome Truth is, like you say, "be sure hell will break loose."

"Foreshadow something" is not a guarantee of horrible things. The footsteps could be a janitor making his rounds, or your friend coming to check on you, just as easily as an assassin or a deathbot or your ex-lover.

But in that moment you don't know. The in-game threat of drama can be more intense than table-level guaranteed drama.

kviiri

AW also has gangs treated as basically larger units, which makes mass battles somewhat easier than in DW which to my recollection lacks such a rule.

And my favorite type of battle in DnD is "largish swarm of a few types of combatants"

Solo fights tend to be boring, for some oft-discussed reasons, unless hacked somehow.

RollingFeles

@kviiri it actually has. Maybe not massive, but fighting with group.

BESW

@kviiri I'm kind of embarrassed that, after Magician taught me to divide solo bosses into multiple mechanical units, I didn't figure out to combine multiple mooks into single units until Fate spelled it out for me.

RollingFeles

@BESW Never name your move. DW allows to play in the same way. But you're right, that "Unwelcome truth" is the fact.

kviiri

10:18 AM

@BESW I did that in DnD 4e once, but my players didn't like it (for the wrong reasons, though).

You know, the usual "noooo that's not how one does it" argument. :)

RollingFeles

I had one cool moment in DW with my players. I showed them organized orcish battle unit. They moved like a legioners, covering their unit with shields and openning it for archers volley. That scared my players alot.

BESW

> "Fencing is not proper behavior for a princess," he told her in the gentle-but-firm tone recommended by the court philosopher.
Cimorene tilted her head to one side. "Why not?"
"It's . . .well, it's simply not done."
Cimorene considered. "Aren't I a princess?"
"Yes, of course you are, my dear," said her father with relief. He had been bracing himself for a storm of tears, which was the way his other daughters reacted to reprimands.
"Well, I fence," Cimorene said with the air of one delivering an unshakable argument. "So it is TOO done by a princess."

doppelgreener

@BESW go cimorene, go

BESW

Her parents, sadly, weren't swayed by her logic, and that was the end of the fencing lessons. She had similar outcomes with the cooking lessons, the Latin lessons, the magic lessons, the juggling lessons, and the economics lessons.

(Chapter One is titled In Which Princess Cimorene Refuses to be Proper and Talks to a Frog.)

doppelgreener

@BESW nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!

BESW

10:31 AM

The frog tells her how to run away and volunteer to be a dragon's princess. Turns out if you're decent at cooking, Latin, magic, and economics, that's a very good resume for being a dragon's live-in servant.

doppelgreener

fantastic

hopefully the dragon hands out a little of the horde so she can get her lessons in all those things

BESW

No, it's more of on-the-job training.

kviiri

Cuphead is an infuriating game.

In a good way, I guess. But I'm already on 3rd island and I still don't know whether I like the gameplay or just the unusual twist on "retro graphics".

doppelgreener

10:47 AM

Anyone who enjoys and is remotely good at cuphead might find dark souls pretty enjoyable and easy by comparison. (Plus dark souls 3 is on PC.)

kviiri

I like difficult games, as long as they're sorta fair. Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup is one of my long-time favorites :)

There was this line in Assassin's Creed where Altair mused about the paradoxes of being an Assassin. They value freedom, but restrict themselves to a creed. They value peace, yet they kill. And so...

I feel you, Altair, when I answer DnD 5e questions with JC tweets.

doppelgreener

Same! I enjoy Dark Souls a lot, but Cuphead seems intense by comparison.

kviiri

Err, how do I big box again.

We actually played Crash Bandicoot 1 through with my SO recently. The levels aren't that bad, but the gems... aaaaaagh!

doppelgreener

That's technically how you onebox, but the link's not HTTPS so that's why chat probably ignored it

kviiri

I did get the Slippery Climb gem on the first try, though. I think I'm a Jedi or something.

doppelgreener

10:53 AM

@kviiri nice one. :)

i've been playing legend of zelda: breath of the wild an awful lot recently. There is a Korok trial that has you wear exclusively wooden equipment, in a zone with several fire-based enemies. The first time I did it I got through on the first try in a mad rush, and this time it took me like, ten tries. I don't know how I got so lucky the first time.

kviiri

I haven't really found Cuphead's difficulty to be off much, but it somehow manifests in a nasty sort of trial and error. Many bosses have a very intense final stage with really hard-to-dodge attacks only avoidable through rigorous trial and error, so the best strategy, so far, has been trying to save up as much HP as possible to the final stage and then simply try to outlast the boss. That's a bit unsatisfying...

BESW

Word of the day: "arborescent" - manifoldly branching in structure; tree-like; growing & branching from a central trunk or trunks.

Tweeted by RobGMacfarlane on January 19, 2018 at 7:00 AM

kviiri

@doppelgreener You failed once by chance and then by overthinking? :)

@BESW Beautiful building!

We had this friendly priest living nearby who liked to have sermons on a grassy hillside on sunny days. "This church has a high ceiling and no walls at all", he said.

doppelgreener

@kviiri Honestly the first time around I was basically just going AAAAA GET AWAYYYYY and succeeded, and the subsequent times I was trying to replicate that. Then I had to actually figure out the path in depth... but discovered things I missed the first play through. :)

11:57 p.m. a hardboiled egg falls out of the vortex on the wall. i stuff it greedily in my mouth and toss the shell back into the vortex.

Tweeted by suntzufuntzu on January 18, 2018 at 1:33 PM

@BESW @trogdor ☝️ I have a feeling that this might be a normal occurrence for someone in amaterasu, probably eventually to be repremanded if they survive long enough to be.

BESW

@kviiri There's a Bahá'í prayer with a similar sentiment:

> Blessed is the spot, and the house,
and the place, and the city,
and the heart, and the mountain,
and the refuge, and the cave,
and the valley, and the land,
and the sea, and the island,
and the meadow where mention
of God hath been made,
and His praise glorified.
—Bahá’u’lláh

doppelgreener

11:07 AM

@BESW I am glad Sagrada Familia got mentioned in that Twitter trail.

kviiri

@BESW Beautiful!

trogdor

@doppelgreener lol

BESW

11:35 AM

@JuneShores Followed those links to this video about puzzle solving vs problem solving, and was reminded of my old idea to design a small dungeon in which each door's open/closed state feeds into XOR gates whose output determines if another door is locked or unlocked.

To venture deeper into the dungeon you have to go back and open/close previous doors to unlock new ones... and slowly lock yourself into the dungeon with whatever's at the center.

(Inspired by an old Doctor Who story where cyborgs that only wanted the smartest humans to add to their collective, went into hibernation at the center of a puzzle maze.)

JuneShores

@BESW i.imgfly.me/ypXhj.jpg

BESW

[grin]

doppelgreener

11:51 AM

The problem is they were found by someone so smart, that person also knew how to stop them.

BESW

Actually, the first problem was that all the humans who got to the center of the maze were idiots--because the Doctor had solved all the puzzles for them.

And then, yes, the Doctor also had some experience with them and was able to out-smart them and trap them back inside their own maze.

...It's one of my favorite DW stories ever.

doppelgreener

@BESW i hadn't noticed!

BESW

Tomb of the Cybermen has a great story, hilariously cheap set, awesome creepy music, a few great character bits... And one of my top three favorite Doctors.

Miniman

@doppelgreener The thing is, the relationship between Cuphead and Dark Souls is like DS1 vs DS3 - yes, the enemies and attacks are faster, but you're faster, too.

I don't find DS1 less intense than DS3, just less focused on reflexes, and more on planning.

There's a real element of "where will I be at the end of this roll" that I miss in DS3.

With all that said, the common element is definitely the learning nature of the game, and that's something Cuphead does really well.

doppelgreener

12:13 PM

@Miniman i'm looking forward to that dark souls 1 remaster that was recently announced

@Miniman yes that too. i find cuphead is a lot faster, gives me a lot more i need to deal with at once (lots of missiles, avoid them all but smack the pink ones) in a smaller space and with less telegraphing and more randomness.

trogdor

1:00 PM

@doppelgreener sarcasm, do I smell it? no can't be

@doppelgreener would you call it harder then?

doppelgreener

@trogdor surely not

trogdor

lol

doppelgreener

@trogdor i find progressing in dark souls to be much easier than cuphead

BESW

1:16 PM

@doppelgreener Don't call him Shirley.

BESW

1:28 PM

When the rough-skinned newt is disturbed, it bends its head back to reveal its bright orange belly which shows its attacker that it is highly toxic.

Tweeted by Strange_Animals on December 17, 2017 at 10:25 AM

doppelgreener

@BESW this is a really weird thing to me: how & why did nature evolve bright orange & yellow as signifiers of toxicity? how did that not get hijacked to the point of being useless by every other creature that would like to be perceived as toxic but without the effort of actually being toxic?

BESW

Frequency-dependent selection

Frequency-dependent selection is an evolutionary process by which the fitness of a phenotype depends on its frequency relative to other phenotypes in a given population. In positive frequency-dependent selection, the fitness of a phenotype increases as it becomes more common. In negative frequency-dependent selection, the fitness of a phenotype decreases as it becomes more common. This is an example of balancing selection. Frequency-dependent selection is usually the result of interactions between species (predation, parasitism, or competition), or between genotypes within species (usually ...

SPavel

@doppelgreener It did

There are tons of brightly colored insects that you can eat all day long

BESW

Basically, the number of fakes have to be less than the number of reals or that particular posematism dies out: it's self-limiting.

SPavel

Nature optimizes towards local maxima though

BESW

1:34 PM

So Batesian mimicry is self-limiting, but Müllerian mimicry is self-reinforcing.

SPavel

so creatures that weren't taking the "look like a clown that got dressed in the dark" approach wouldn't suddenly swap

BESW

Remember, also, that there are competing methods of avoiding being eaten, like camouflage, and selection for various methods depends on things like generation frequency, maturation patterns, and how quick one's predators are to adapt to particular methods.

Aposematism is also preferred, for example, by creatures that are likely to be preyed upon repeatedly in a short period of time.

trogdor

@doppelgreener ok then

BESW

Warning colors only work if the predator has enough experiences with the warning mechanism and its associated deterrent that the predator remembers and makes the connection.

trogdor

I have been considering getting cuphead, but it also seems like a hectic game, and I am still hooked on Slay the Spire

SPavel

1:41 PM

@trogdor Buy a Paradox grand strategy, and you'll never need to buy another game again

trogdor

@SPavel no thanks XD

@BESW thanks for comparing me to him I guess? XD

SPavel

People play them so much that it's a meme to post "hours played" numbers equal to starting dates - 1066, 1444, 1836, and 1936.

@trogdor But they are not hectic at all! You can pause the game and take as long as you need to command your garrison to defend Poland against Hitler's Panzers

doppelgreener

@trogdor hollow knight is also in this area.

The Good Year

►

(it's dunkey, so, moderate language warning)

trogdor

@doppelgreener yes

doppelgreener

and:

trogdor

1:43 PM

I would have gotten Hollow Knight a long time ago but it looks haaaaaaaaard

doppelgreener

Dunkey's Best of 2017

►

NautArch

@doppelgreener At a quick glance, I thought you just posted a list of The Best Donkeys of 2017.

SPavel

@NautArch I found this but they didn't post a list of winners

NautArch

@SPavel I"m not sure if that's better or worse than a Goat Rodeo.

doppelgreener

@NautArch it is that as well, and the best donkeys of 2017 is videogamedunkey [end of list]

SPavel

1:51 PM

@NautArch A miniature donkey show is way better!

@BESW Wiki tabbing has led me to en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexy_son_hypothesis

trogdor

@doppelgreener lol the ending

hilarious because I saw his thing on Odesey earlier

XD

SPavel

Also pronking which sounds like the new teen craze like planking or dabbing

doppelgreener

@SPavel look up "sploot"

trogdor

@doppelgreener what if I don't want to?

doppelgreener

@trogdor you will be rewarded with cute if you do

trogdor

2:02 PM

ok fair enough

A corgi splooting

it do a sploot

Why do dogs wink?

because they're cute and know it?

SPavel

Also, speaking of signaling theory, I'm reminded of this one YA fantasy book with a quote along the lines of "A person with one sword could be dangerous, a person with two swords is likely an idiot trying to show off, but a person with three swords will destroy you if you mess with him because swords are heavy and there's no reason to carry 3 unless you routinely use all of them"

3

Would be fun to have a character optimized for Bluff, Intimidate, and carrying capacity who takes that strategy and runs with it.

doppelgreener

2:06 PM

@SPavel this is pretty funny & good.

Rubiksmoose

@SPavel I like this a lot

doppelgreener

@SPavel There is a video from Spooney talking about him playing Tandem the Bard, who creates a reputation for being the greatest swordsman who ever lived (despite being, skill-wise, pretty mediocre at anything of the sort).

Tandem introduces himself at the first session to a samurai another player was playing. He says he's Tandem, the greatest swordsman who ever lived. ... and the samurai isn't having it. The samurai has spent his entire life dedicated to learning the sword, and he doesn't believe that Tandem can make anything like that claim, so challenges Tandem to a duel to prove it.

A lucky d20 on Tandem's part and a critical miss on the samurai's part on the first round has the samurai's sword flung meters away, apparently effortlessly, by Tandem. So the samurai, gobsmacked, goes: "You're right! You are the greatest swordsman who's ever lived!" and thereafter brags about it regularly, volunteers Tandem for all kinds of crazy stuff ("he's the greatest swordsman who ever lived!"), and generally gets Tandem constantly into trouble.

Eventually Tandem winds up in a coliseum arena fight — probably the samurai's fault he's in that position — and is up against a giant ogre with an enormous club that can and will probably kill Tandem the moment he gets hit. The ogre probably has tons of HP. Tandem is doomed.

.... Then Spooney remembers about the called shot rules, and starts calling shots to the ogre's arm exclusively. The DM's confused but goes with it. A few turns in, Tandem's managing to dodge the hefty club (and death), and Spooney asks his DM: has he taken more than a quarter HP in damage so far? DM says yes — and Spooney tells him the ogre's arm is now crippled and can't be used. So now the ogre can't swing his club.

Then Spooney wears down the other arm, then the ogre's legs, and eventually renders him helpless and slays him. So Tandem has just taken down a frightening ogre in front of a city's audience, and is celebrated far and wide as the greatest swordsman who ever lived.

(end story)

SPavel

The moral of the story is, don't play a samurai

Rubiksmoose

Bravo!

@SPavel And also that called shots are kind of silly?

SPavel

@Rubiksmoose No, it should be a viable strategy to wear down a foe that can't hit you

Rubiksmoose

2:19 PM

@SPavel I should have said that I've never seen them implemented in a good way in any system I've played, but I think the only one that actually had it was the star wars RPG now that I think about it.

SPavel

The problem with called shots is that "called shot to the head" is a cheat code for "ur dead m8"

And that's a way better debuff than "can't sword good"

Rubiksmoose

@SPavel Called shots especially don't really mesh with D&D's HP system and lack of any appreciable injury/debilitation system

SPavel

@Rubiksmoose Also true.

There are inklings of good ideas here and there such as "throat punch"

NautArch

@SPavel no, the moral of the story is LOVE!

Rubiksmoose

@SPavel Yup but in the end head shots always end up being the thing that just makes the system not work. Sure you can use it as DM as well, but that is not going to be fun for anybody.

SPavel

2:23 PM

Honestly I can see a doable system where you have an HP track for generic killing, and a called shot penalty based system on top of that, so that attackers can choose between "die! die! die!" or debuffing

NautArch

Is it the dandwiki season or something? I feel like there has been a rush of questions related to it.

Rubiksmoose

@NautArch I know right?!

SPavel

In this system, "called shot to the head" is classified as "HP damage, let's see if you can score a crit"

doppelgreener

@SPavel right, in exchange for being much more unlikely to hit though

Rubiksmoose

@SPavel Honestly, I really dislike the HP system in D&D. It is probably the thing I like least because of the difficulties in RPing a character that is fully capable, but inches from unconciousness

And then you get healed and are at 1 hp again! Ready to get back into the fight instantly with all your abilities and vigor.

nitsua60

2:26 PM

@Rubiksmoose Have you tried/seen Angry's "Fighting Spirit"?

Rubiksmoose

@nitsua60 I have not!

nitsua60

I haven't tried it yet, but it's an explicit attempt to address that issue: theangrygm.com/fighting-spirit

doppelgreener

@nitsua60 explicit carries multiple meanings there given it's the angry GM

nitsua60

I cast a mundane version of haste in my last [5e] session--it was pretty excellent.

@doppelgreener (well played, sir)

NautArch

@nitsua60 ?

nitsua60

2:30 PM

Paladin was beating down on a monster trying to get it to go down with all his might. Divine Favor, lots of smiting, burned an inspiration to convert a miss to a hit... and almost got it there. Then I reminded him he could drop his sword, draw a dagger, and make one more attack. (That's what I'm calling "mundane haste")

Turns out 3 damage was all it took.

And five minutes of laughing at the image of this paladin going all beserker-rage on the carcass.

Rubiksmoose

@nitsua60 Fantastic!

Varis

Could anyone quickly explain what "On initiative count 20 (losing initiative ties)" means?

NautArch

@nitsua60 ah, nice!

@Varis Lair actions have an auto initiative roll of 20.

nitsua60

@Varis game?

NautArch

So if you have a PC who rolled a 21 initiative, another who rolled an 19, the Initiative Count 20 would go between them.

Varis

2:41 PM

5e, looking at a mummy lord lair

NautArch

Does that description help, @Varis?

Varis

Yes, helps alot thank you

@NautArch would you also say that those lair actions only occur once an encounter actually begins or would you consider those actions to always be active outside of combat too?

KorvinStarmast

@nitsua60 From Angry's Fighting Spirit article But I think it might be more interesting if a Long Rest recovers only a certain number of HP I'd go with con modifier restored to HP per long rest.

nitsua60

@KorvinStarmast 0e-paced healing, basically? I can dig it.

NautArch

@Varis No, it's every round (that you want to do it.)

You don't have to make it every round, but it syour choice to give the action.Not doing so, though, may impact the difficulty of the encounter and possibly change the XP for it.

Sort of like eachmonster an action. You don't have to make them take it :)

To remind yourself (once you've done it once and the players know something is coming), I"d add the lair into the initiative order so you don't forget.

Varis

2:49 PM

Okay that makes sense. I'm not the DM for our game, I'm just trying to find a way to beat a Mummy lord at level 6 after we accidentally summoned it to kill a necromancer

doppelgreener

@Varis where's the daddy lord lair? Are they separated long or has he passed on? Does their child lord call often?

Or is it adoptive, or a non-binary relationship?

NautArch

@Varis oh, hahaha. I recommend NOT reviewing the Monster Manual unless the DM has provided your player with that information. Not sure if metagaming is okay at your table, but it's generally frowned at mine.

@Varis The DM may also not want you to beat it and it could e part of the storyline. Level 6 is a bit low for a mummy lord encounter.

Varis

He said it was okay since I rolled a nat 20 on arcana check on the mummy lord, which went to 26 with bonuses

But also, it was summoned by a magic bean that we got as a loot item, which we used to kill the necromancer. So basically this mummy lord has sprung up after we did one early part of the storyline in a really strange manner

@NautArch he also said that it would fit with my characters backstory because this "isn't the first time you've done this"

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