TRPG General Chat

@JoelHarmon well, since OOC and IC I’m apparently the sane one (I gm for this group the first Friday of the month, this is not a new fact), Ezynnia Eka Enri Elim is a LGish, genderfluid (using she/her and they/them primarily), healer and fighter (and glass blower on the side).

BESW

Oh, they've probably got some really great glassblowing scars.

Bardic Wizard

12:55 AM

Ezynnia is pretty against killing for no reason, against the wanton destruction of forests, and for any option that will result in minimal deaths.

Adeptus

1:45 AM

@AncientSwordRage My wife is still nervous about the amounts of sugar & caffeine I consume. Usually just one small glass of Coke a day, sometimes two. (Plus tea & chocolate, but she's just as bad as me for those, so she doesn't mention them...)

Shalvenay

2:09 AM

@BardicWizard eheheh, glass is fun XD toasty work, though

Hot RPG Questions

2:38 AM

5

Q: What does it mean for a device to be hardwired?

Recently while reading about security cameras in Shadowrun 5e, I came across a forum post where someone suggested that if you don't want a decker to be able to disable your security cameras, you can hardwire them. From what I understand this means that they are not connected to the matrix, but wh...

shadowrun-sr5

Adeptus

3:30 AM

@HotRPGQuestions It uses those stiff single-core wires, not the flexible multi-core ones.

V2Blast

4:26 AM

@Adeptus But that seems like a very reasonable amount...?

BESW

When they moved production from New Zealand to the UK and switched from the runny white centers to the thick, frosting-like filling, it got way harder to cook them scrambled.

Bardic Wizard

@Adeptus I likely take in way less caffeine than you (I usually have a couple cups of caffeinated tea in a week at most) but I bet I can beat you for sheer amounts of sugar ingested (in theory; in practice there’s this limitation known as parents with no understanding of the teenage need for S-U-G-A-R!!)

V2Blast

@kviiri Oof. Both parts of this reminder ring way too true for me too. <3

Bardic Wizard

Anyone got advice for running a short one shot in Fate Accelerated?

I’ve got a friend who wants to try it but won’t gm anymore.

So I volunteered to run a short one shot instead of our usual game next week

V2Blast

@BardicWizard The only advice I can provide is "have fun"... so not really :P

I've played several sessions in a Fate Condensed sci-fi game, but I don't know how different FAE is

Bardic Wizard

4:38 AM

But I’m not sure what I need to do to make it fun for the rest of the group (used to D&D5e and Risus) so I want advice

V2Blast

(I also don't think our group is making the most/best use of the tools provided by the system)

It helps if you provide more specifics on what sort of advice you need

BESW

Fate Core, Accelerated, and Condensed are all the same basic system with different levels of complexity.

V2Blast

@JohnP Sorry to hear that!

@BESW I gathered that much :P

BESW

The big thing about Accelerated is its Approaches, which describe "how" you do things rather than "what" you do.

I think of it as "tv logic," where character competencies are more often defined by the fact that they'll approach any problem with the same attitude.

28

A: Approaches for shooting?

Use the approach which makes sense for how you're shooting at the time. Approaches were a little difficult to wrap my head around at first. Unlike skills, they aren't about what I'm doing: they're about how I'm doing it. Any approach could be appropriate for shooting a gun, depending on the cont...

V2Blast

@ThomasMarkov I feel like the question might just need to more explicitly ask only for terms already used in existing TTRPGs (which would mean answers would have to cite evidence of such use), rather than just asking for "any term". Though a few answers do seem to be supported by "Good Subjective" (i.e. "here's what I've done and how it went"), so I'm not sure how best to allow for those.

Bardic Wizard

4:44 AM

I’m not sure how to help people who play d&d understand that it’s not the same. This has been a problem before with other games when someone says “alright, let’s attack” and the system really wants them not to be so combative (not just that, I just can’t think of other examples rn)

It’s a group steeped in the same game we’ve always played and I’m trying to change that a bit and nobody but this one other person is thinking about changing their playstyle to fit the game we’re playing

V2Blast

@BESW Ah, good to know!

BESW

31

Q: Spoilt for choice: helping traditional-system players adapt to narrative-control games

My group teethed on D&D 3.5 and loved 4e, but now we're eager to take advantage of FATE's more narrative- and character-driven philosophies. However, on our first (DFRPG) game last night, my players frequently seemed spoilt for choice: faced with "what do you want to do?" instead of "which of the...

new-players fate dresden-files system-introduction

V2Blast

@BardicWizard Ironically, the GM of the Fate Condensed game I'm in is basically trying to run a campaign originally written for D&D 3.5e or so using Fate, but they're not really taking full advantage of Fate's mechanics to do so (e.g. not providing any Situation Aspects 90% of the time.)

BESW

38

Q: How Fate games could go wrong and how to prevent that

I'm introducing a few of my friends to the Fate system, and we're using Fate Accelerated for a quick start. Reading answers for some questions on this site I found an interesting paragraph: One of the biggest, IMO, difficulties for traditional players is the proactive creativity that Fate bol...

fate fate-core fate-accelerated

V2Blast

I figured there would be a few of those questions :)

BESW

4:50 AM

15

Q: What do I focus on in a Fate Core one shot to showcase its differences to my D&D group?

I'm a player in a D&D 5e group that play since about 1 year. I like it, but I find the d20 dice system and plethora of rules to be constraining and coming often in the way of good story telling. In my group it seems I am the only one bothered by this, my other mates being quite into the nitty-g...

fate fate-core gm-preparation system-introduction

40

Q: Problems to look out for if you are a D&D group who play Fate for the first time?

Soon I will be hosting my first two games of Fate. One will be an intro-session with one GM and one player and the other will be a more serious gaming session with one GM and three players, which will probably contain multiple Fate sessions over the weekend. The group has a lot of experience pla...

dungeons-and-dragons fate system-introduction

I dunno how much any of that is gonna be helpful, but it might prompt some more specific questions we can answer.

Bardic Wizard

Those are actually all helpful; I’m a lot less worried now that I know I’m not the only one having worries about switching systems

I think I’m just going to start by telling them that it’s the story that drives fate and not the rules, so we’re in this to tell a story

MikeQ

Another big difference is that all the players, not just the DM/GM/narrator/umpire/etc, end up sharing the storyteller hat and may be expected to improvise worldbuilding on the spot

And it's extra important that everyone be on the same page, and have the same expectations about goals and tone and the fiction's rules, before the game starts

BESW

23

Q: How much the players can narrate in Fate? How much can be prepared beforehand by the Gm taking that into account?

Me and a few of my friends are starting to play Fate (currently the accelerated edition) and I think we are all loving it. One of my friends seems to grasp the collaborative narration very well. When he gets some spy to tell him today's password, he doesn't wait for me to tell him that - after h...

fate fate-core fate-accelerated

20

Q: What's is the GM's purpose in Fate Core?

While this may sound like a rant against Fate Core that's not my intention. I'm just trying to understand what I'm missing. I'm just beginning to learn about Fate Core. In the book it talks about being a collaborative storytelling experience, but I didn't realize what that meant until I watched ...

gm-techniques fate-core

Bardic Wizard

I’m going to remind them that they’re free to tell the story and not just to follow. We have a goal to accomplish with this: what’s going on in the council while the usual characters wait for news (a zombie attacked the council and the goal is to see what happened with that)

MikeQ

It definitely helps if each player has a sense of what each other player likes and wants. And yeah, Fate expects competent and active player characters. Can't just sit around and wait for action to happen.

BESW

5:04 AM

@BardicWizard So, here's something I've found personally: Fate works just fine with a D&D-style attitude. It's not what the system's best at, but it's not a "wrong" way to play. And because the system has all these other bits hanging off it like rewards for failure, personality-driven bonuses, and the ability to make non-character things into characters, it's really easy for even a D&D-style group to slip into experimenting with other stuff.

As the GM, I find that my best Fate-specific tool is to offer juicy compels.

Bardic Wizard

@BESW what kind of compels are the juiciest? Apple flavored?

BESW

I like calamansi, myself.

Seriously though, I've seen compels be absolutely magical for helping people get into a "character failure is game success" headspace, because in Fate the rewards for failure aren't just that your story is more interesting--you get an actual bit of currency to make your character do better later.

It pries open the door for people who are used to making choices driven by optimal mechanics.

Bardic Wizard

And that’s going to be where my friends get confused

BESW

It's okay to be confused. My early Fate games are VERY confused, I spent something like a year in rpg.se chat rooms interrogating a couple very patient people about why Fate didn't seem to be working the way I expected.

Bardic Wizard

A lot of our d&d games are using the mechanics to get success rather than advancing the story

BESW

5:10 AM

The magic of Fate is that the story is the mechanics. You can't get mechanics without having a story attached to them, they just don't exist. Fate mechanics are the reification of narrative description.

So if somebody says "I do [mechanic]," the rest of the group can say "Tell us about it!"

[rummages] There's a game which might be fun to use as a training tool...

Nov 15 '19 at 6:30, by BESW

Wushu: the Ancient Art of Action Roleplaying is a sadly orientalist game which does a really interesting thing akin to the Japanese anime/manga technique of pausing storytime to spend reading/watching time examining a single moment of the story.

(Free!)

The basic idea there is that you get more dice for every detail you add to your action.

It's massively overkill compared to Fate, but it's an interesting training exercise.

Bardic Wizard

My other problem is that I’m GMing a game that I’ve never played — it’s not like that‘s a new thing for me, but it’s never fun to do. It’s how I started playing D&D, as the gm.

BESW

Roll For Shoes is also a good training tool, because you can only get a new skill by describing what happened to you (not just what you did) with your last action.

Bardic Wizard

@BESW that’s actually a good idea, using some training tool.

BESW

I use Roll For Shoes a lot as a kind of transition between systems.

Bardic Wizard

@BESW what’s roll for shoes? I’ve only vaguely heard of it

BESW

5:14 AM

Mar 4 '14 at 12:54, by BESW

And Roll for Shoes is a dead simple system we regularly use for impromptu play; the whole system is only seven bullet points, and it requires no preparation.

Oh gosh that site's down.

Um.

MikeQ

Found the original Roll for Shoes post on web archive.

BESW

The rules are in the tag wiki.

27

Q: How can I use roll for shoes to introduce someone to roleplaying?

A friend of mine is interested in exploring this whole "role-playing thing." Contrary to my usual approach, I've decided that the kinda-system roll-for-shoes is the most appropriate introduction, due to the ease of system mastery. Being used to rather more elaborate games, what do I need to keep...

new-players roll-for-shoes

8

Q: Is Roll-For-Shoes a good system to practice DM skills?

I've got several campaign ideas rolling around in my head, and I want to get into running one or two, but it has been a dragon's age since I last tried to run a campaign. I recently noticed Roll-For-Shoes in a number of interesting topics, and heard it was a good rules-lite system for teaching...

roll-for-shoes

Here I talk about using a game of RFS as a prompt for talking about how TRPGs work and modelling behavior.

Bardic Wizard

Roll for shoes is fascinating.

BESW

Isn't it though? It's so tiny and simple but contains so much potential in action.

And you can play a decent round of it in half an hour or less, so it's really low cost.

Bardic Wizard

It’s like a baby —small, looks pretty unassuming, but has a lot of inner depth (though a baby’s is filled with food and bodily fluids and roll for shoes is filled with ideas and potential)

BESW

5:22 AM

I've played RFS with one player, and with nine.

Bardic Wizard

Wow. Was it easier with more or with fewer people?

BESW

Both are difficult in different ways.

Playing with just two people at the table is intense, because you're both paying full attention to each other the whole time, there's nobody else to split the gaze with. But that can make it very intimate in ways I don't think it's possible to get with any larger group.

Gaming with nine players required a lot of discipline on their part, and I had to exert a lot of social capital (charisma, mana) to keep things centered. I added some semi-formal structures like "round the table" initiative that only broke when it made obvious sense to.

Both groups had people who'd never played any TRPGs before, so that was exciting.

Bardic Wizard

Hmm. Our group isn’t tiny but it is small so hopefully that isn’t too much of a problem

BESW

I find it's a lot less exhausting to play ANY kind of TRPG with two to four other people; more or less stretches my social energies in ways that aren't bad, but draining.

With the big group, I had everyone come up with their character independently without any prompt as to setting, theme, etc. And to justify them all being together I said "You've all been kidnapped to fight in an interplanetary gladiator arena. You're in the cages below the arena now, waiting to be brought up to fight." and that was the start of the session.

Jun 30 '15 at 3:54, by BESW

(Last game, the Queen of All and a robot pimp were imprisoned beneath an alien gladiator pit with a winged woman, an omniphage miner, a cyborg martial artist, and a Russian paparazzo.)

Bardic Wizard

Wow.

BESW

5:31 AM

I also once played in a game of RFS where we were salespeople in a big retail outlet store, competing to see who could win Employee of the Month.

Roll For Shoes liveblog: Employee Of The Month

Jan 3 '15 at 10:05, 2 hours 2 minutes total – 83 messages, 5 users, 4 stars

Bookmarked Jan 3 '15 at 13:24 by BESW

Bardic Wizard

@BESW wow. There are no other words.

BESW

Oct 26 '16 at 11:37, by BESW

Last week I did play a game of roll-for-shoes in which our characters played a game of Roll For Shoes.

Because it's so simple and fast, RFS lends itself well to silly frivolous experiments like that.

There's not much investment so there's more freedom.

Bardic Wizard

This is going to be an interesting game...

Using FAE or using RFS, I will likely have stories to tell soon.

BESW

We once tried to have a slightly more serious game, but by the end we discovered that the character who was a bear, was actually just a bear, not a talking bear or an intelligent bear.

People have suggested that if you ever want to run a game that escalates like a Monty Python sketch, RFS wouldn't be a bad option.

V2Blast

@BESW Yeah, this is another way in which the Fate Condensed game in doesn't feel very Fate-y - I don't think our GM has offered us a single compel so far.

@BESW That sounds... interesting. :)

BESW

5:43 AM

I mean, I'm not super into Python myself, but I know a lot of people are.

@V2Blast The GM may be waiting for players to self-compel, but I find that this needs encouragement and modelling at first.

trogdor

It's definitely best for everyone to be throwing compels around, but yeah in my personal experience both in Fate and in similar games that have you do a mechanics thing to effect the story and reward another player, people can be forgetful or hesitant to do it

So it's good for the GM to do it enough times for people to get used to it as a mechanic

BESW

It also helps, I think, ease players into the co-conspirator mindset.

If we've spent months/years thinking about how to make our characters as successful as possible because the dice and the GM are both in the role of troublemaker, we can have trouble thinking of problems we want our character to experience when the dice and GM aren't inventing them for us.

The GM offering compels helps bridge that gap because the problem is still coming from the GM but the player is now in charge of it.

trogdor

That's true

I also don't know what to do when modeling doesn't work to be fair

BESW

Generally, our solution to "I don't want to compel myself, why?" has been "Oooh my trouble aspect is terrible I should fix that."

trogdor

5:58 AM

Like in GSS I have ushered about two or so different groups through a few games and it's been hard for them to keep track of all mechanics and give dreams to other players sometimes without prompting or example

BESW

I also noticed, as a GM, that often players would just do stuff that should be treated like a compel, and one of my responsibilities was to notice and give them the point.

V2Blast

@BESW They're definitely not - they've just never run Fate before, apparently, and I've never played it before this game either.

BESW

Ah fair enough.

I struggled with compels as an early Fate GM myself.

But again, the system's so laid-back that it's really hard to actually break it, so it worked well enough while I underwent an arduously long learning curve and my friends were all very patient.

(Shoutout to Troggy who has been my TRPG buddy for... getting scarily close to half our lives now, and is the one constant in my gaming life for that whole time.)

trogdor

6:16 AM

Lol

I have never lost touch with a friend who didn't lose touch with me first

XD

BESW

Yeah, but there's a big gap between "stayed in touch" and "comes to every single TRPG session for a decade and a half unless physically unable," and I appreciate that.

trogdor

Well sometimes it's mentally unable more than physically but now I'm just nit picking

XD

Or even socially unable, sometimes it's because people are pressuring me to do something else

There's a whole ability spectrum

XD

trogdor

6:57 AM

also I don't know what to call temporarily losing the ability or inclination to say words? it's not general lack of physical or mental ability to speak, or even carry on a conversation, but it is definitely still a thing that happens occasionally

even during those moments I know how to speak, I actually know what I physically do to say things, but that doesn't make any difference

I guess it's called Aphasia? but the definition of that says it usually occurs after a stroke or a head injury and that's definitely not what's happening in my case XD

yeah it seems that word is meant for like, being injured or sick and that's not it

there's also nonverbal autism but that seems to be meant to describe kids who haven't started speaking yet or just people who just never start

hjacking the conversation XD

ah here's a term

Selective Mutism

that seems like it

also slightly better terms being situational mutism or intermittent mutism

because they don't imply actual choice

XD

trogdor

7:38 AM

so TIL the word for the thing that happens sometimes

kviiri

10:28 AM

@BardicWizard This is both true and kinda true in many ways. My personal experience is that while DnD often is very rules-driven, it also rides heavily on GM fiat (which, while technically being established in the rules of the game, contrasts with gameplay that rides heavily on hard or hardish rules established by the system)

I think the typical case is combat vs non-combat, with the former typically being more rules-driven than other systems, and the latter often being very freeform.

(in my subjective experience, the latter is almost always very freeform and has only brief nods towards mechanical systems, but YMMV)

For contrast, many of the modern strain of narrative-oriented games have more binding rules in a sense, including Fate, and typically the expectation that the GM cannot just wave the rules away when they want, while leaving a caveat that the group as whole has a fiat.

They just don't feel as much like "rules" because they're generally much smaller by volume x)

kviiri

10:50 AM

Anyway I'm personally only like, half-familiar with Fate. I've played more Apocalypse World, which is rather on-the-nose about having rules that the system expects the GM to obey too. Fate feels, by my experience, considerably less rigid in that sense, but shares the basic feel of the story emerging from applying the rules

The AW model is pretty divisive by my understanding, lots of people object to it on principle. Others like it because the rules make being a GM relatively simple – yet others find that they just force patterns one'd follow anyway

ACuriousMind

11:09 AM

The thing I like most about PtbA-likes compared to Fate are the playbooks, actually. They take away the element that I've seen invariably fail in first (and second and third) attempts at playing Fate - coming up with good aspects on your own.

kviiri

My experiences agree, but I think Fate might've been much better if my group was more eager to try it and as interested in "hacking their way into" the system as I was

SmokeDetector

12:27 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Bad keyword in answer, bad keyword with email in answer, email in answer, pattern-matching email in answer, potentially bad keyword in answer (347): Can you choose to cast a spell at a lower caster level? by Aleta Robert on rpg.SE (@Rubiksmoose)

Hot RPG Questions

2:20 PM

2

Q: How to add a magical composite bow to a treasure haul?

This is a matter of clarity in writing. When I have a Composite Sortbow with a strength rating of +2 and a +1 magical enhancement, what is the clearest way to write this on a loot list? Precedent is obviously preferred. I've considered: Composite Shortbow +2, +1 Composite Shortbow +2 (STR), +1 "...

dnd-3.5e magic-items adventure-writing

Bardic Wizard

6:09 PM

@kviiri yeah, that’s gonna be fascinating to see how these very “gm is the rules”-type players deal with a different set of expectations for the gm/player dynamic

Hot RPG Questions

6:32 PM

1

Q: Does Alarm caster know if alarm has been triggered by multiple creatures at the same time?

Scenario: I know that Alarm has been cast on an area. I become invisible and wait for another creature to approach the affected area. At the exact moment this creature enters the affected area, I also enter (still invisible). Would the caster of Alarm know that the Alarm had been triggered by two...

dnd-5e spells

kviiri

6:51 PM

@BardicWizard May the odds be in your favor!

Bardic Wizard

7:33 PM

@kviiri well, thanks

RedRiderX

11:40 PM

Oh hey Matt Mercer released two critical role subclasses on D&D Beyond

Oath of the Open Sea and Way of the Cobalt Soul.

BESW

11:58 PM

Happy Birth of The Báb, everybody!

Hot RPG Questions

1

Q: Can the Ollamh Harp and Anstruth Harp be carried as easily as lute?

The party stumbled over an old elven city and found an Instrument of the Bards. It is the Anstruth Harp. The scale in the picture is ambiguous. The initial take is that it isn't a hand held harp (of the kind often seen in pictures of angels playing harps, or something like this 16 string lap h...

dnd-5e magic-items bard

Roll For Shoes liveblog: Employee Of The Month

Transcript for