TRPG General Chat

1:56 AM

I'm gonna be running a "wilderness survival" campaign in D&D 5e later this week. It should be interesting.

The campaign is taking a decent amount if effort to put together, mainly to provide the necessary depth. And also to ensure balance.

Shalvenay

2:17 AM

@PhiNotPi let me know how it goes :)

SmokeDetector

5:08 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Url in title, bad keyword in body, bad keyword in title, blacklisted website in body, blacklisted website in title, +1 more: mumybear.com/radiantly-slim-diet/ by user45709 on rpg.SE (@doppelgreener)

The Oracle

5:23 AM

0

Q: How does one build enough reputation to respond to threads?

When I asked a question in response to not being able to respond to a question thread, my thread was stopped by site moderators as follows: put on hold as primarily opinion-based by Purple Monkey, Miniman, KRyan, mxyzplk♦ 8 mins ago Many good questions generate some degree of opinion bas...

discussion

Trish

7:48 AM

odd question: I know it is OT to ask for recommending a specific module or game. But would it be OT to tell abotu a group and then ask "In which order should I play Modules X Y Z" or "I want to play this kind of campaign. Does system X Cater to this?" Just curiosity.

kviiri

I would personally verge on "ok" over the latter at very least, at least if the campaign is quite well specified.

And more importantly, the desired experience

doppelgreener

8:19 AM

@Trish The second is totally viable. For D&D the answer will be contentious (there's a crowd who believes D&D can do anything, and to suggest it can't cater to something is suggesting D&D can't do everything) but for other games there is almost always a straightforward correct answer of yes or no or sort of.

Trish

D&D can't be used to play The Dark Eye... simly for the reason that its magic system is incompatible on several hundred accounts. You don't play any D&D anymore once you chopped out all the violating spells

doppelgreener

Sure you are, just change anything in D&D, that's part of the rules — will be the idea.

kviiri

The joys of Rule Zero.

Well

I've been thinking about Rule Zero and some assorted problems, in particular the summarization that "the GM is always right".

I wonder if it discourages GMs from owning their mistakes and fixing them in case they happen (because by that rule they can't make mistakes).

Szega

8:54 AM

@kviiri Well, "The GM has final say in in-game matters" is not as catchy

trogdor

@kviiri I would say telling someone they are literally always right is not the best idea

XD

kviiri

@trogdor Yeah but that seems to be a fairly common understanding, explicit or implicit, among gamers

trogdor

Yes well I will just say, we could try to change that

kviiri

Yea

trogdor

We is all of us, not just presumably 2 people

doppelgreener

8:58 AM

In that it reframes them as not mistakes yeah; we get those situations where the DM ruled something, but it was incorrect, but now it's a house rule because the DM ruled it.

In other games there's a go-to of "oops we were wrong, let's fix it" because there's nothing telling them they were right to change that rule.

trogdor

@doppelgreener exactly where I come from with my rebuttal of it

We have games that say the opposite or at least something in opposition to that

And the ones among those that I have played were usually pretty great

doppelgreener

And there is stuff like how "the GM is always right" can be interpreted to mean "the GM can do no wrong". Either or both together can also lead to really unhealthy gameplay states between the players at the table. I still have bad feelings over some gameplay I've had where I didn't feel like I could challenge something the GM was saying that I didn't feel was fair or reasonable or right, in D&D and D&D-like games.

kviiri

I'm also thinking of cases like "oops, I totally destroyed party balance by giving the party too powerful items/allies/homebrew powers", but even discussing taking them away is off the table because that would mean the GM made a mistake which does not happen. Instead, the GM must fix the situation by buffing enemies or other hacks.

@doppelgreener One of my first GMs was of the school of "I'm neutral, I just tell what's happening and let the dice decide". It's since become a huge red flag for me

doppelgreener

I don't think it's possible for a GM to be neutral

There's lots of different perspectives, modes of play, styles, etc of GMing -- and there isn't one that's definably "neutral"

one person's "neutral" is another person's "that style where you stick to the rules too much" or etc

(also, inaction is not neutrality -- it's tacit endorsement of something)

kviiri

Yeah, that's what's bugging me. One can't really claim they're letting the dice decide when they are the one who keeps calling the rolls.

Had to look for a bit but this question is a good example: rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/108693/…

user357094

9:14 AM

@KorvinStarmast my apologies, typo on my part. Should be semper.

trogdor

@doppelgreener @kviiri yeah neutrality isn't exactly benign if you set the thing in motion before you "decid not to stop it because you are neutral"

dot_Sp0T

10:06 AM

oooh, are we dropping GM experiences?

kviiri

Yea

From time to time :D

dot_Sp0T

10:23 AM

I once was part of a Roll20 GURPS beginners campaign. The stated intent of it was to get people into the game and give them a chance to try out the system.

The GM was actually quite versed in the whole ruleset, and did great at explaining things when asked about them most of the time. But they also, for some reason, insisted on introducing a bunch of custom-made content, etc. and 400 point characters (which, for all intents, practically forces you to make a superhuman characters with 14+ level atrributes rather than going for skills..).

that took some twist there

I personally enjoy making the game all about the players. Though I've got the luck of players wanting to experience whatever I can cook up in that brain of mine

kviiri

10:34 AM

I'm currently planning for a game that's going to be very much about the PCs, to the point where I scrapped even my A4 excuse plot because I want to leave the players space to work around in with their own Stories (this is 7th Sea where player-made stories are a part of the mechanic)

David Coffron

10:47 AM

Woohoo got the dnd-5e badge

dot_Sp0T

11:04 AM

@kviiri that sounds pretty good! I mostly try to scatter possible plothooks everywhere and have the players decide what they wanna pursue and whatnot, but it's hard :/

NautArch

11:17 AM

@dot_Sp0T tbe problem I've noticed with scattered ploy hooks is that my players seem to just grab the first one.

kviiri

@dot_Sp0T Yea, I'm excited to try it! It's a bit daunting too, though

With each player having a Story of their own (although I've asked them not to finalize anything before Session 0) there's a lot to run, and that's not including the various other things the GM should throw in (Season/Episode stories and Villain schemes for Influece)

dot_Sp0T

11:34 AM

Yeah the grabbing the first bit thing is suboptimal and a constant issue. But it's something that can conveniently be addressed in a meta discussion before or after a normal game-session I think - not that it does much

eimyr

kickstarter.com/projects/blackarmada/…

Check this out.

dot_Sp0T

The setting sounds fab, the diceless-ness sadly triggers me :(

doppelgreener

12:34 PM

@eimyr do you have a pitch message i can pin? :)

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