TRPG General Chat

1:15 AM

@Piomicron On my "someday, maybe" list (which I have cleared out time to really crank on this summer) is a 5e product called "zero to hero" which gamifies this part of a character's creation. Let me know if you'd be interested in hearing more.

@nitsua60 I've seen similar products in 3.5 and 4e.

And I've got notes toward a Fate adventure with an equivalent conceit.

@BESW I feel like you were present for a conversation, oh, say, two-and-a-half years ago when I laid out some of my thinking on it?

Proooobably?

1:36 AM

@BESW random chat: I've seen you alot in almost every game tag in RPG.se but the most popular one - 5e. Any reason for not playing it? :P

1:47 AM

@HellSaint I stopped seeking out D&D of any edition about five years ago.

Yeah D&D just hasn't been on our groups radar for a while, except recently for my 4e campaign

And 5e is a little too much like 3rd edition

My RPG experience started in D&D 3.5, and when my group become weary of that system we moved to D&D 4e, which had so much not 3.5 in its favor that I took more than a year to notice that while the symptoms had changed my problems with the game hadn't gone away. The cause wasn't particular edition mechanics, but the premises underlying the whole Dungeons & Dragons concept.

Or 3.5

The fun we had in D&D was in spite of the game's structure rather than because of it, so we cast outward and found other games which support and encourage our play goals and play styles rather than staying with a game that we have to push against in order to get what we want out of it.

I disagree slightly

1:56 AM

And yeah, the closest we've come to a D&D edition that works for us is 4e because it's got a clear sense of what it wants to do and doesn't fool itself into thinking it can be a universal system for everything. When we were wiling to play within 4e's established sandbox, it worked reasonably well... but it was an exhausting sandbox to play in.

I think mechanics have some good to do, but i also technically agree that even 4e's mechanics drop the ball when it comes to things outside combat

And it has its own mechanical issues even if I don't personally feel they are as bad as 3.5's

I'm currently playing in Troggy's new 4e sampler campaign, because new folks in our group want to experience that system. I'm not seeing it as sustainable in the long run.

And I definitely see now why you had issues DMing it @BESW ,

..

As for 5e--if I want to play a game with those kinds of mechanics, I'll play 13th Age instead because it's not weighed down under the weight of decades of franchise tradition so it was free to pick and choose the D&D-like concepts it actually WANTED to work with, and to bring in decidedly non-D&D-like elements as appropriate.

It's exhausting keeping track of combat, and having an actual story ready isn't even something I have bothered to do much work on

2:00 AM

@HellSaint In summary:

@BESW same, I honestly feel a little bad about starting it in the first place, @Miniman likes it enough but June is obviously not as interested due to my own mismanagement

@trogdor Well, I shouldn't have left you to twist in the wind without accompaniment, so.

Well you already had to run a whole year or so long campaign that pretty much burned you out on the system

I feel like you taking the blame for my screwing this up a bit so far isn't exactly fair

That being said I am glad for the immense help now

Even if I'm taking my own sweet sweet time with it.

2:21 AM

Well we can afford to right now

And really you have done a lot more work since the last session I ran than I have

2:53 AM

After suggesting the house-rules tag over homebrew tag... is there any reason to keep a distinction between them?

@HellSaint I'm not sure it makes a difference, but I'd consider house-rules to be an interpretation of existing rules, and homebrew to be an extension of them.

We have a meta discussion about what they are. rpg.meta.stackexchange.com/q/5845/43856

Extending the weapons table with a new entry is homebrew. Choosing to (not) use the encumberance table is a house rule.

My question is: do we actually need that distinction?

KorvinStarmast

What Joel Said.... so yes, @HellSaint we do

3:02 AM

My main concern is that it seems to confuse more people than help. We have some questions in the house-rules tag that feels more about homebrew content, and vice-versa.

e.g. rpg.stackexchange.com/q/123869/43856 is house ruling, not homebrew, but is tagged as homebrew. rpg.stackexchange.com/q/122706/43856 is a homebrew subclass for ranger, tagged as house-rules

rpg.stackexchange.com/q/122878/43856 is a homebrew weapon, not a house-rule

Point being: there are many questions tagged differently from our meta discussion, and to be fair nobody seems to care.

That may be worth a new meta post to discuss, with those examples.

@HellSaint Is that a problem with the tags or the tagging?

@JoelHarmon Well, I'm agreeing with BESW about that. I'll create a meta question soon :P

\o/

(I'm not cheering, I'm indicating that I've surrendered trying to grok the meaningful distinction b/w the two.)

Ben

3:18 AM

Can I ask what the description for each tag is? (am on mobile, so having difficulty accessing tag descriptions)

Homebrew: For questions about homebrewing new rules content for an existing system, this tag should be used when locally-created content is at the heart of the question. (Note that soliciting ideas for creating homebrew is off topic for the site.) Not to be confused with the [house-rules] tag.
House-rules: House rules are small fan created additions and replacements to core rules in a rules set and this tag should be used when there are locally-created rules at the core of the question. In most cases, they are not officially sanctioned by the designer, in contrast to optional rules. For cre…

Both have much longer blocks, but that's the header.

Ben

To me, the house rule tag de

To me, the house rule tag doesnt match up

But... Po-tay-to po-tah-to

3:57 AM

Back thinking about Dragonlance in 5e: Kender (as written into 1e) had a "taunt" trait: "Any creature the Kender taunts must save vs. Spells or attack wildly at once for 1-10 rounds at a -2 penalty to hit and a +2 penalty to their armor class. Kenter are masters at enraging others by verbal abuse."

I'm planning to make the taunt inflict disadvantage rather than a static malus. I'm trying to decide between bonus action and reaction. Thoughts?

I mean, if it's a reaction they're just going to taunt all the time, right?

I have an idea for Kender stat blocks

1/2 an HP , 0 AC, and tons of random items as loot

And you get +1 Cha every time you kill one

4:15 AM

inb4 my meta question gets closed because it's too broad

Did I mention I love Kender? They taste great in stew

@nitsua60 Same if it's a bonus action - there's not many classes with a better at-will bonus action than that.

@Miniman Yeah, but a bonus would be just once per round, not once per turn.

@trogdor (I assume you mean 0AC in the "low is good" scheme of 1e, of course.)

@nitsua60 You can only take one reaction per round...?

@Miniman Fair point. (It's after midnight here.)

4:24 AM

@nitsua60 Ah, fair enough.

In that case, reaction it is! (I like the flexibility of just yelling out an insult any-old time.)

Reaction triggered by what, though?

Anything that catches their ADD attention?

Gah. The triggerless reaction is such a "our action economy is too light, let's use part of it in a way that it was never intended rather than admit it's too light" thing.

That's mostly directed at the designers' new triggerless reactions, rather than yours, though.

Ben

Conversation that occurred in our Savage Worlds game last night:

3 scientists talking about magic.

Scientist 1: you shouldn't be talking about "magic" like its a thing.

Scientist 2: fine "science" that makes no sense, therefore, "magic"

Scientist 1: ah, I see you call, and raise with a Clarke

Scientist 3: ...Kent?