TRPG General Chat

3:47 AM

hey there @nitsua60

8:01 AM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in body, blacklisted website in body, pattern-matching product name in body, pattern-matching website in body, potentially bad ip for hostname in body, +1 more (491): which is popular for its diverse herbal and natural effects by koilweru on rpg.SE (@doppelgreener)

vicky_molokh

9:10 AM

@V2Blast Kiba from Wolf's Rain.

kviiri

11:59 AM

Hmm, the recent Angry GM post about crafting had some rather good thoughts

I've usually been quite averse to include crafting mechanics in my games where a clear, well-thought out one didn't exist yet. Mostly my players who have been suggesting crafting mechanics have been interested in either FREE MONEY in exchange of their character working or roleplaying a slice of life medieval smith, which makes for a rather poor fit with high fantasy adventuring

Or in some cases, it's explicitly a support activity for adventuring, eg. in 4e where crafting can't make a profit, ever --- just turn money into useful items that might not be for sale.

Making crafting a reward loop of its own --- rare ingredients and stuff like that --- might be really interesting.

kviiri

12:20 PM

@nitsua60 Hi! Is there any way to see the history of the chat feeds? I think I saw something interesting there a few days ago but forgot what it was

BESW

12:32 PM

All I know of is going through the feeds manually.

kviiri

12:52 PM

Related, I hoped Throwing away secrets would've been an essay about getting rid of secrets in games entirely

BESW

1:12 PM

[skims article] So it's just "Kill your darlings" with a dash of neurotypical smugness?

kviiri

yuh

I think the point is valid of course

vicky_molokh

Link?

kviiri

@vicky_molokh slyflourish.com/throwing_away_secrets.html

vicky_molokh

Thanks. I don't see what makes the article NT-smug though.

BESW

1:29 PM

"If it's good, a good idea will come back." Even NT folks who make a profession out of collecting and implementing ideas tend to think King is wrong about that.

vicky_molokh

So maybe it's not a matter of NT-ity, but of being a follower of King's school of writing, that's all?

BESW

Things that NT folx have the luxury of arguing about, others do not.

vicky_molokh

I have trouble parsing the meaning behind that sentence.

BESW

For me, whether or not good ideas come back and bad ideas fade away is a matter for consideration and debate. For many of my NT friends, statements like "The reality is that good secrets come back" are just plain wrong.

vicky_molokh

If anything, remembering everything everything everything seems like not a normie trait.

It's just that the attribution of the advice to NTity seems like a kneejerk reaction to me.

BESW

1:39 PM

So King's advice (and thus Shea's) is presenting as universal truth a very subjective experience, and phrases like "I got a lot of flack for that particular tip but I still stand by it" sound like deliberately remaining ignorant of realities beyond one's own.

The advice itself is fine. Framing the advice as a universal truth which gets unfairly challenged, is what I call NT smugness.

vicky_molokh

Well, it's complicated. Lots of people say that King is wrong. Lots of people also fail to compete with King by following their own methods and techniques. What percentage of the failure is due to the different choice of technique - 0%, 1%, or 50% - that's not something easily measured.

BESW

It's not universal even amongst normies (I've tried it, it doesn't work for me), but it's inescapably untrue for many people.

vicky_molokh

It's just that 'I tried this, it didn't work for me' isn't always a correct characterisation of what happened either. It may or may not be.

BESW

Happily this conversation is not about comparing writers' results (if that were the case, I'd bring up Ursula Vernon).

vicky_molokh

Anyway, I just think claiming that a given principle is universal is not something that only normies do, nor something caused specifically by NTity, thus my scepticism regarding the accusation (if that's the right word).

BESW

1:43 PM

Again, that's not what I was talking about.

And what I was talking about, was in the context of Shea's history of Lazy DM advice.

vicky_molokh

Ah, so the accusation is based on things outside the linked article combining with the article?

goodguy5

blocked at work, can someone give me the cliff notes?

vicky_molokh

'When making a list of secrets for a game, don't record the ones you didn't use; if they're cool, they'll come back to your mind, if not, they won't.'

goodguy5

Hrm... I don't know if I buy that.

vicky_molokh

I'm probably not a target audience for lazy GMing in general. I like my settings thought through.

kviiri

1:58 PM

:I think there is merit in abandoning unused material at the end of session, in that it forces the GM to consider the advancement of the plot basing it on what the players know

Might also help thinking outside the box. Novels aren't written in one sitting and ideas can improve upon rehashing a few times.

vicky_molokh

Depends on author. ^_^

I'm pretty sure some of the classic novels have been originally written and published serially in magazines or the like.

kviiri

Serial writing leaves room for revision, too!

goodguy5

I don't mind not using material.

but what I'm likely to do is rehash it for another game.

kviiri

2:14 PM

@goodguy5 Yeah, the big idea of the post is that you shouldn't "hang on" to it --- if it's a good idea, you'll remember it without writing it down. Which isn't necessarily true, but still

@goodguy5 You should tip your employer to block chat.stackexchange instead of random RPG blogs ;D it might help my employer too

goodguy5

I have a terrible time remembering things. So that idea can politely go file itself.

Colin Gross

@kviiri the internet.... uh... finds a way.

kviiri

@goodguy5 I can dig that

But I think it has a correct point in that fixing ideas that aren't known to the players in a game is not always a good idea

I'd posit it's a good idea mainly in some particular playstyles that emphasize a sense of a living world, integration of PC and player knowledge

You know, in the vein of that old story that's been circulating for ages online, where a lich destroys the world because the players were more interested in fighting for the right for gay marriage in the world

vicky_molokh

2:35 PM

Did the stack just drop without warning?

Hmm, seems to be fine now.

Colin Gross

@kviiri Seems fair. The social injustice of the world was it's downfall.

kviiri

@ColinGross Yeah, even Rome started getting worse after they began scrutinizing gay relations

Colin Gross

@kviiri I giggle a bit to myself every time I read "scrutinizing"

Xirema

3:23 PM

@kviiri TBH, I kind of want to make an RPG video game where the game can unexpectedly end if the player spends 20 hours following mindless sidequests instead of picking up the main plot thread about the Corrupted Dragon that wants to Destroy the World™.

goodguy5

@Xirema oh, you mean pikmin 1?

or dead rising?

vicky_molokh

So Star Control 2?

Xirema

Like, you're collecting turtle butts for some lonely marine biologist in some backwater town, and then all of a sudden, a massive wave of inescapable death spreads across the land, destroying everything.

goodguy5

(not rpgs, but still)

Rubiksmoose

Majora's Mask?

goodguy5

3:24 PM

yea, a couple games do that and it's not fun.

2

Xirema

@goodguy5 Yeah, but unlike Pikmin 1, it would be extremely unfair and poorly signposted, for maximum frustration. =P

goodguy5

o i c

Xirema

My ethos as a game designer is that Frustration is a Valid Game Mechanic.

@Rubiksmoose (If I actually designed a game like that, I'd probably do more the Majora's Mask thing, where the core narrative loop only lasts like 2-3 hours)

Joshua

Never give a chimpanzee an admantium battle axe.

G. Moylan

AHA! I found the room again

bookmarking this time

goodguy5

3:30 PM

don't forget to star in the topright, if you can

and welcome back

Rubiksmoose

@Joshua I mean not giving an ape any kind of axe seems like very solid life advice honestly.

G. Moylan

but we can give them typewriters. In fact, it's been recommended

Colin Gross

@G.Moylan Has been done. Mostly "s" is what they typed.

The theoretical random monkey experiment has also been calculated. Heat death of the universe comes first.

G. Moylan

how do those odds change if either the typewriters or the monkeys are magical?

Joshua

For the worse.

Colin Gross

3:37 PM

@G.Moylan "Also in 2003, Paignton Zoo carried out a practical test by putting a keyboard connected to a PC into the cage of six crested macaques. After a month the monkeys had produced five pages of the letter "S" and had broken the keyboard."

macaques are inherently magical.

The guy that ran the simulation on AWS ... geeze... almost a decade ago jesse-anderson.com/2011/08/a-few-more-million-amazonian-monkeys

kviiri

4:03 PM

@Xirema It works better in video games I'd argue :)

Many things that work well in one {real life, novels, films, video games, tabletop games} are quite terrible in the rest.

Rubiksmoose

@Xirema That does sound intriguing!

kviiri

An entire game with a time limit can quite easily go south though, if the designers don't understand the implications of having a time limit.

Rubiksmoose

@kviiri I would hope that designers of any game conisder the implications of major design choices though of course.

kviiri

Hehe, yep :)

Xirema

How many games have tried to do the basic plot of Majora's Mask? Because it's weird that we haven't had any major mainstream breakout attempts to do so.

kviiri

4:11 PM

@Xirema There was that one Zombie game with an alteration (and without time travel)... the basic objective being to survive in a mall infested with zombies until a certain time when they'd evacuate you, but with sidequests to complete too for better endings

I think it was for Xbox

Time limits in general have been on the decline since the late '90's and mostly for a good reason.

Although the situation got weirdly inverted: where there previously were plenty of games where a time limit was essentially just a hold-over from arcades, there started to be games where time limits were ignored even when they made narrative sense

(Which isn't a bad decision, all the time. Probably not most of the time)

G. Moylan

yeah I've played many a video game where you get an "urgent" quest to rescue someone or stop something from happening but the event just pauses until you show up

Cthulhu Dark and the Tibetan Monastery

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