TRPG General Chat

@BESW :DDDDDDDDD

@UrsulaV Like when you battle your way to the dragon’s lair, defeat the dragon slayer, and convince the Dragon to invest its hoard in the formation of an art college, which in turn will lead to a Dragon-themed merchandise industry.

Tweeted by MadeOfTeeth on March 25, 2018 at 9:37 PM in reply to MadeOfTeeth

"If you think that your new job title involves sitting high and mighty on your throne when you aren't out conquering or in the harem...ya need to screw your head on straight, mistah. Because out here, we expect our leaders to lead. And that doesn't mean giving speeches either, it means rolling up your sleeves and leading from the front, leading by example. ...

All hail king @Shalvenay

... In fact, it means that we're not here to rule with an iron fist to begin with. Instead, we're here to serve -- whether it be watching over my countrymen with the eyes of a guardian angel, or making sure that the stuff that keeps our cities going keeps going."

@MikeQ XD.

finishes channeling Jherala

@BESW and this, too :D actually have something like that planned, although the art college isn't necessarily part of it. (it would be something my sort of dragon would do, though :3)

1:28 AM

I'm reminded of the king's confession in Shelly Duval's The Frog Prince.

Mm the biggest problem with monarchy is exactly that many monarchs have gotten away with not properly running and leading the countries they had

Wether out of incompetence, greed or lazyness or whatever it happened to be case by case

@BESW tell me about it? :D

The princess is trying to back out of her promise to marry the frog, and the king pulls her aside and explains that they can't do anything to attract the critical attention of their subjects, because their continued royalty depends entirely on nobody noticing that royalty aren't actually contributing anything.

Oh God I remember that

It would have been pretty good if Robin Williams frog had toned it down

Or at least more bearable anyway

Sorry RW, rest in peace

@BESW LOL

1:41 AM

It's at the very least interesting to watch

And when it wasn't trying too hard it had a good sense of humor

Shelly Duval's Fairy Tale Theatre is awesome, even when it's terrible, and it's rarely terrible even when it should be.

I agree that it is not terrible

But at least that particular story had one unbearably terrible scene

I don't think RW did a horrible job overall as the frog, but that one scene I didn't like was a rather conspicuous bad mark

I do think the rest of it was at least amusing

Yeah.

And then there's Mick Jagger in yellowface in The Nightingale...

That was still amusing

Not commendable but amusing

Yeah, it's kinda like "The Talons of Weng Chiang:" surprisingly good, but also surprisingly racist.

1:50 AM

Not familiar with that one

It's a 1977 Doctor Who story.

Yep just googled it

also: how're things going @MikeQ?

@Shalvenay They go. Trying really hard to stay above water, so to speak.

1:53 AM

ah. in a lull in one game (Nits' stackizen ToA), still waiting for another to resume, and hoping to get a third picked back up this upcoming weekend

Tabletop-wise, things are good though. In a PF game I'm in, I finally got to ~~sacrifice~~ retire my previous character (who was not quite useful) in a Gandalf moment, and will be replacing him with an old school summoner.

@MikeQ ah, what was your old char, and why weren't they quite useful?

Druid X / monk 1. Conceptually sound, it gets a ton of versatility in the front lines (could turn into a dinosaur, then sumo-grapple-pin a huge demon, so our rogue could sneak attack it to death) and in magic support roles (could turn a battle on its head by building walls of stones and thorns).

But the rest of our party is very specialized, which means I went from "I can do anything" to "I need to do everything but only get 1 standard action"

@MikeQ ah. having to fill all the party holes

the perils of druids :P

Yeah. We have a very high-offense-no-defense party.

1:58 AM

"I can't do everything out here! Someone help me please!"

Yep. So instead of having to juggle two roles, summoner gets to do both because they effectively get 2 turns per round. One half gets up in the front lines, the other stays back and provides support.

yeah

As for the game I'm running, I brought in a new player and the recent session went really well. Been trying to avoid mechanical challenges (Find trap -> Rogue disarms it -> Rinse -> Repeat) and focusing on narrative ones, like puzzles.

ah. puzzles and me have a really strange relationship, whether I'm the DM or a player :P

There are many, many bad ways to do puzzles. And maybe "puzzle" isn't the best word for it.

2:03 AM

it's very easy for me to screw up puzzles as a player because I'm not coming at things with the same "box" most dungeon-delvers are

and as a DM, I don't rely on them all that much myself

No, that's not your fault, that's the bad puzzle design

heheheh. maybe. thinking that a pendulum cable is really an electrical cable XD

A lot of GMs design puzzles as:
1. Present obscure clue, and assume players can read your mind
2. Players either figure out the specific action that you expect them to do, or
3. Something punches PCs in the face

@MikeQ yeah.

Or more generally, it becomes an obstacle not just for the PCs, but for the gameplay, and grinds the pace to a halt

2:06 AM

yeah, exactly

Next time I design an environmental puzzle, I'm going to refer to Masters of Umdaar and Unwritten.

So I've been experimenting by "spreading" the puzzle elements in different places of the dungeon/environment, and that way the puzzle solving process is integrated with the exploration process

And if possible, integrate the narrative/lore into the puzzle as well, which lets the GM avoid expository infodumps later on

2:22 AM

@Shalvenay Anyway, enough about my exploits, how's your 5e game going?

2:32 AM

Yeah I struggle with wanting to make puzzles but not knowing how to make them specifically the way I want without Players just not knowing what to do

I like the idea but

It's hard to accomplish

@MikeQ politically crazy, but otherwise OK? hard to tell atm. Flaming Fist seem to like their swarms of blood-sucking insects :P

Lol

More like they like to emulate them

@trogdor Maybe try to think of them as "non-combat challenges" rather than true puzzles. Don't design them to have a specific solution in mind.

2:50 AM

Mm yeah but that's part of what I struggle with

Because I get ideas I really like, and want to implement them pretty specifically

Like what?

Oh one of the most easy to remember is the volcanoe lair of a villain

The players go in and see his lab and are supposed to go through his things and figure out information via clues in the room and lab notes

It immediately gets derailed by them finding the same info via a time gun

Which was awesome

I don't know what that means. What does the time gun do?

It did a lot of things, but in this instance it let them watch the past like a movie

So they see the villain talking to people and then kidnapping them with giant spiders

And also saw that someone was working with him like some kind of acolyte

Ok, so the objective was to find out the information, and they found out the information. That's a good thing, right? I'm not seeing the problem.

3:05 AM

No none of that was the problem

I think we are on separate tracks here

Yes, I thought you were describing a time where you designed a puzzle of some kind, and it didn't go as planned

The problem is my habit of setting things up to a ridiculous degree

Well it didn't, but the issue was all the work I did

And also, after that puzzle the rest of the session derailed completely

They never even met the villain

They ran around doing things I had to improvise for

My point is that I put too much prep work into linear stuff and then end up chucking it out the window so the PCs can do what they decided to do and I end up improvising a lot

It's a habit I'm trying to break so I can focus more on making a scenario that they can still do the things they decided to do

Well sure, that's pretty natural with most tabletop games. The GM has to be flexible because the players will inevitably do things the GM didn't expect.

Yes

That is the nail being hit on the head

When it comes to plot and narrative, you should try to avoid planning things around the player's actions, and instead plan around the NPCs or environment/world events.

You can, at best, influence the players' decisions by motivating them with incentives

3:12 AM

All fair advice

3:40 AM

@MikeQ I think this keys into a common challenge faced by combat encounters, too: that there's usually a specific solution in mind (maim/kill everyone in your way) and it's often hard for the GM to adapt to other solutions--or finding another way is considered somehow cheating.