TRPG General Chat

AncientSwordRage

12:57 AM

@BESW oh?

@goodguy5 forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?275995-Oobleck

goodguy5

WHO SUMMONS ME

oh nice

BESW

May 5 at 22:33, by BESW

The BOLT RPG Engine (v0.2.1) by Ajey Pandey is a modding-focused role-playing game engine designed to port across multiple settings. It’s a d10+d4 skill-based system, with fast and lethal combat, an XP system that prioritizes roleplaying, and a core resolution mechanic that incentivizes risk-taking and inducing chaos.

Jul 8 at 9:59, by BESW

Ajey Pandey wrote a twitter thread about how his game Bolt is "not really aiming for newcomers. It's going for GAME DESIGNERS."

AncientSwordRage

@BESW cool thanks

BESW

@AncientSwordRage Bolt has a lot of hacks and drifts already, which is very cool.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW makes me think of Vraska/golgari

@BESW I'll have to take a deeper look

BESW

1:05 AM

The Bolt twitter account showcases them often.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW interesting, they' also mentioned DASH

BESW

Yeah! It's also on my TBR.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW hit me to when you get the chance to read/play

Hot RPG Questions

1:24 AM

5

Q: Does the Awaken spell give or create a soul?

The Awaken spell adds sentience - granting 'intelligence' of 10 to either one beast or plant target (one that starts with an int score of 3 or less). It also adds mobility, ambulatory function, perceptions - and even capacity to grasp an entire bonus language. It can even talk. Yet inquiring mind...

AncientSwordRage

@HotRPGQuestions I've heard All dogs go to Heaven

Rubiksmoose

1:44 AM

→ 5 messages moved to Not a bar, but plays one on TV

nitsua60

2:36 AM

@Catija Oh, gosh, yes. I was roundly not appreciated during my terms on the local school board because I'd occasionally bring up the fact that the school system needs (IMO) to think of itself as dual-missioned: education and child supervision. (And I'm a teacher saying this, you may remember.) I suspect that many now have a different perspective on that than they used to.

(Then again, maybe I'm just still smarting at getting voted down so often....)

Sorry to take so long getting back to you--was dealing with my own car-thing.

Hot RPG Questions

3

Q: How to cast 5e / 5th lvl 'Awaken' (spell) on 'highly intelligent' plants and beasts?

The 5e Awaken spell allows a gain of intelligence and ability: After spending the casting time tracing magical pathways within a precious gemstone, you touch a Huge or smaller beast or plant. The target must have either no Intelligence score or an Intelligence of 3 or less. The target gains an I...

dnd-5e spells monsters

GcL

3:33 AM

@nitsua60 Are you talking about classroom management?

Catija

4:22 AM

@nitsua60 :D Yeah... that seems like an obvious argument... if schools didn't exist, what would we do with kids while parents worked? We kinda needed something because Bennett turned to biting Gus to get out his frustrations and all at being ignored, stuck in a house, etc... and we were struggling to have two full-time jobs and care for both of them. At their ages, there was just no way we could manage.

BESW

@Catija When my mother was teaching below university level, she always said the priority was "are they safe, happy, and learning?" in that order.

(I now apply this to pretty much any activity I'm supervising.)

Catija

In the US?

BESW

Technically, yes.

Catija

I kinda wish that more schools still feel that way... so many are pushing for better test scores, they forget the first two things.

BESW

(We're in Guam.)

Catija

4:35 AM

Ah! That's cool. I only know of people who have been there but I haven't run into people who are there. :D

BESW

Our local schools are doing a kind of hybrid distance/on-campus thing so that students whose families can continue to keep them home, do.

→ 5 messages moved to Not a bar, but plays one on TV

I'll take this opportunity to re-up this:

PSA: Anyone can ask for a conversation to be moved to the Not A Bar (or other chat room) at any time and I or one of the RPG mods will re-locate it as swiftly as possible. This does not reflect poorly on the topic, the conversers, or the asker; sometimes there's just a need for stuff to not be in the main chat and we'll never ask for justification.

5

Hot RPG Questions

5

Q: Are there any unexpected problems with this Homebrew feat?

I (the DM) am considering the following feat, after a player asked about an alternative way to use Two Weapon Fighting. Knife Fighter You are especially skilled at the use of the Dagger, gaining the following benefits: You gain a +1 bonus to AC while you are wielding a dagger. You can use two-...

dnd-5e feats balance homebrew-review

Hot RPG Questions

5:11 AM

3

Q: Can Alchemists Experimental elixirs be combined to generate a roll on the potion miscibility table in the DMG?

DMG p140 has a potion miscibility table. Artificer subclass Alchemist creates Experimental Elixirs. Can these elixirs be combined for a roll on the aforementioned table?

dnd-5e magic-items class-feature artificer

Catija

... Since it relates to RPGs, I thought I'd mention a silly notion I'd had last week or so... of turning the Community into an RPG and having the CMs be the characters... and we were trying to think up what classes/races the different CMs would be.

user15026

Who would be the bard? :P

Catija

5:32 AM

Not Shog.

JNat suggested he'd be something like a Tank.

Bardic Wizard

@Catija what would you be?

Catija

I don't know! I've never played a tabletop RPG, just video games (like Dragon Warrior).

Bardic Wizard

@Catija sometimes personality comes into it, sometimes it’s just what you like or what you’re good at (semi-related: my username comes from a RL joke by a friend who said I was like a “bardic wizard” because I sing when I’m emotional and otherwise I’m often really nerdy and carry around books).

Catija

Oh, I've also listened to a bunch of Adventure Zone.

@BardicWizard :D That's cool. :) I don't really know what my personality is like... I... uh... have a bad habit of trying to fix things a lot and like helping people... but sometimes I rush in without all the information.

Bardic Wizard

5:53 AM

If you were playing D&D, that seems like a high-charisma, medium-wisdom character, and the helping thing makes me think paladins or clerics... it’s a thought.

I’m heading to bed, goodnight all!

BESW

It's interesting that TRPG and D&D are being used interchangeably in this conversation, and apparently that's in part because so many CRPGs use D&D as their model.

Goodnight!

Catija

@BESW Are they different?

BESW

What, TRPGs and D&D? Yeah, it's kinda like only ever mentioning Counterstrike in a conversation about video games.

Catija

I thought D&D was a TRPG ?

Bardic Wizard

Oh, one last thing before I actually go to bed. (Shamelessly trying to plug my finally completed RPG, now named Ensign of the Week) If you were playing the game I designed, that’d be a perfect match for a Communications Specialization (end shameless plug)

Catija

5:59 AM

@BardicWizard :D Thanks!

Bardic Wizard

Actually good night this time :-)

BESW

It is! But there's literally thousands of TRPGs, many of which --even the more mainstream ones-- are dramatically unlike D&D, to the point that "race" and "class" aren't things.

user15026

@Catija it is but it is far from the only kind or model or engine

user15026

@BESW this reminds me can you help me remember I want to play space Goblins again sometime

BESW

Like we could talk about Monster of the Week and wonder which of us would be The Chosen, The Flake, The Monstrous, or the Mundane.

user15026

6:01 AM

I know they don't mean Flake the chocolate but I'd be that one

BESW

@Ash Oooh yes! I would like that. How about we pencil it in for next week's Cozy session, since we'll be done with She-Ra?

Catija

@BardicWizard Congrats on completing it!

And good night!

user15026

@BESW yessssss okay good

user15026

(although awww yeah no more she Ra after this week)

BESW

...maybe we'll play a She-Ra game some time.

I know a couple options.

Catija

6:02 AM

Then you get to watch it again and appreciate the bits you missed.

user15026

@BESW whaaaaaat excited Scorpia hands which are just like excited crab hands with more oomph

BESW

@Ash Yeah, there's a couple games explicitly crafted for She-Ra-inspired play.

user15026

@Catija or the bits you like a lot

BESW

I dunno if any of them will fit our cozy agenda but it's worth checking out!

user15026

Like Scorpia's morning affirmations

BESW

6:04 AM

user15026

Yes!

Catija

The last part is the best.

user15026

I like it all!

user15026

I like to think I give great hugs.

gszavae

6:26 AM

There's a "be nice" policy on this site right? (or at least "don't be not nice")

MikeQ

6:41 AM

@gszavae Yes, there are some metas about it somewhere.

gszavae

@MikeQ I was pretty sure there was a policy on it, cheers

MikeQ

@gszavae More officially, it refers to the RPG.SE code of conduct

BESW

I'm pretty sure they finally realized "be nice" was little more than civility pablum and that it's directly responsible for so many of their users confusing tolerance with permissiveness, and the wording's been struck from the code of conduct.

gszavae

@BESW Well they replaced it with "No subtle put-downs or unfriendly language" so I'm not sure how much was gained

Is it (essentially) enforced here?

MikeQ

Sort of, in the sense that someone being exceptionally rude could get a cooldown suspension. Fortunately that does not happen often.

gszavae

6:58 AM

@MikeQ Ah I see. So nothing like comment deletion then? I don't have a good overview of how the system functions, I can only see a small part of it

MikeQ

Oh! Right. I was thinking in terms of chat. Yes, on the mainsite, it usually means comment deletion, editing posts, and maybe also some other site moderation tools.

e.g. if the comments erupt into argument and personal attacks, it's likely that the whole section will get nuked or moved to chat, and replaced with something reminding folks to be civil

gszavae

@MikeQ I see, thanks!

Sos

7:51 AM

Hi, any advice on making D&D campaigns whose sessions are too distant from each other? I'm on my first DMing experience and we are following the Dragon of Icespire Peak, and the 1st two sessions had 3 weeks in between. From what I can see, the next one will happen in 7 weeks, so it's hardly worth to follow a story like this

BESW

How long is each session?

Sos

Each session so far has been really long. The last one lasted about 6 hours, excluding breaks

The first one was not very different

BESW

That's long enough to tell a full, satisfying story if you build for that goal.

Sos

But you mean a contained story? Beginning and ending within a session?

BESW

I'd make the game episodic; I did it with my Atomic Robo-based campaign for a year or more. We didn't have many weeks between sessions, but we'd never know who would show up for a given session.

So each session was, like, the equivalent of an episode in a TV serial: same characters each time, but one problem per episode that would get solved in that episode.

Sos

7:57 AM

Ah right

BESW

And if somebody doesn't show up, well, we've got a lot of characters and they don't all have to be in every story.

(It helped that Atomic Robo's advancement progression can just be ignored without losing anything satisfying about the system, so questions like "do I fall behind if I don't come every week?" stopped being an issue.)

Sos

But in that case it's much less sandboxy and more railroaded isn't it?

BESW

(a) Only if you want it to be and (b) is that a problem?

You're using a pre-made module that expects players to be a certain level when they finish it, right? That's a railroad: you reach a set end at a set point in time. One-shot adventures are just tightening that up so it's not as tedious and you get more story for your time.

Sos

No no, not at all, just trying to get how it goes in practice. As I'm following a quest-based adventure, I can easily make it more episodic where each session they need to face a specific quest of those and I can cut down on the number of overall quests

exactly

BESW

And for long-form campaigns, that's honestly still easy to do: just make it character-based rather than event-based.

Sos

8:03 AM

I'm sorry, but I don't really understand what it means character-based. Sorry

BESW

Long stories that move from episode to episode are about the development of the one thing that's consistent from episode to episode: the player characters.

Don't make the big campaign question "will they defeat the bad guy?" but "will Charles learn to open up" and "can Junko become a better mother" and "will Fflewder learn he doesn't need to lie to make people like him."

You know, the interesting stuff that makes stories compelling and memorable. "And then Arawn turned into a snake but Taran stabbed him again because turning into a snake never helps" makes for a fun setpiece, but "Taran learned that being an adult is about trustworthiness and responsibility, not titles and weapons" is what makes the Prydain Chronicles great.

Sos

Eh, this sounds super hard not gonna lie :P

BESW

It's almost impossible if you don't recruit your players as collaborators.

When I started my D&D 4e campaign, one of my players made a character who was a nationalist, racist, isolationist bigot. He told me that he wanted the character to realize he was wrong and find a more healthy patriotism and work to bring his country into the world stage. We did that.
The character's story culminated in being offered to *lead* his country by rebels who thought (correctly) that the proper leader was unfit to rule. He realized this would cause civil war and destroy his nation, and instead retired from adventuring to become a mentor to the leader.

Sos

That's nice, I see what you mean

BESW

Another player in that same campaign made a character who defected from a tyrannical empire and made questionable deals with morally dubious beings in order to get the power to defy and bring down the empire he'd helped support. He had to deprogram himself and earn the trust of people he'd hurt both personally and through his service to the empire.

Sos

8:17 AM

Well, I dont see right away a way of doing it given my PCs backgrounds, but I guess I'll have to speak with them to know this

BESW

I didn't come up with these story arcs, but every time I started crafting an adventure I'd throw in opportunities for the players to have their characters face the themes they'd chosen to be struggling with.

You're a nationalist who refuses to admit your country might need help? Here's an adventure that takes place in a fortress that your national hero spent time in, and you'll get to see first-hand evidence that he was good friends and allies with nationalities you now despise.

Sos

I think I get you, and I can work with something like that certainly! But I also wouldn't like to throw the campaign away, given that they already started hearing about it and thinking on what is going on with the whole dragon thing

BESW

That's also something to talk to them about. Get their input on what their hopes and expectations for game nights might be.

Something I sometimes do, especially with new group compositions, is go around and say why we're here and what we hope for.

"I'm here because Ash invited me, and I hope to solve mysteries."
"I'm here to find out what roleplaying is like, and I hope to make people laugh."

etc.

It's okay if all you want from a game is rolling giant handfuls of dice, but knowing that makes the group a lot more effective for everybody.

And then you can collaborate to meet everyone's goals, often even with a pre-made module that wasn't designed with those goals in mind.

Sos

Well, related with all of this, I can't help but feel a bit bummed. With all the planning that this took, making minis, organizing backstories, etc etc...

BESW

Ah, yeah.

The work doesn't need to go out the window.

Sos

8:26 AM

Well, I know it's only a game... and that people have their lives and all that, but still...

@BESW thanks a lot for your comments and patience, I truly appreciate it

BESW

Again, the setpieces are probably fine. It's the character stories that are gonna make the thing really memorable.

You're welcome! Let me know if I'm ever overbearing or unwanted.

Sos

Not at all, I really appreciate it!

BESW

I've made a lot of mistakes and I'm happy to share them so other people can make new mistakes of their own.

Sos

Well, they do have quite interesting stories:
1. Is a run-away bard, who got involved with a princess and now is being followed. 2 thugs came after him in the last session. He shared what happened with the PCs at the end.
2. Was a princess who hated princess life so ran-away to live with her master monk farmer. She learned to be a monk, and now hates cabbage. Her master was kidnapped, so she is after him.
3. Was a human woman, that due to a curse was transformed into a tiefling man. Went on to learn the ways of Warlock to try to get the spell reverted and avenge herself. Also is a trans-wom…

I can totally see some of these things playing out session by session. For instance, in the previous one my plan was only to have the bard followed and attacked. He ended up singing "Dancing Queen" by ABBA in a tavern after explaining what happened to him.

I can see that they can start hearing rumours that will help find whoever did wrong to them. To know more, they'd have to face a dungeon, and at the end they'd get more explanations, or face whoever kidnapped / killed / etc

BESW

If I were you, I'd ask the players what each character's hopes are--and what the player's hopes for the character are, because that's often different.

Like, "revenge on orcs" is a character goal. But the player goal for the character could be "learn to forgive" or "ally with orc lawmen to bring the outlaws to justice" or something else entirely.

Sos

8:37 AM

right

BESW

The nationalist bigot's goal was to restore his nation to its former glory. The player wanted the bigot to realize that the stories of ancient glory he'd grown up on were prelapsarian propaganda.

Sos

ahah but that's super nice!

BESW

[rummages for link]

Kamola the Prince-Maker

Aug 28 '13 at 10:46, 19 minutes total – 55 messages, 4 users, 0 stars

Bookmarked Nov 15 '13 at 17:39 by BESW

Sos

including dental work to make his teeth look more like dragonborn fangs than half-orc tusks ahahahaha

BESW

If I were writing that story today, I wouldn't have used queer-coding to make the prince a less appealing leader for Kamola to follow. That wasn't cool.

(Or, I would have more clearly telegraphed that it was Kamola's problem, not the prince's.)

Sos

8:44 AM

this is nice ahahah

man, you guys sure know how to build a story. The more I read and hear what others are doing, the more I feel that I shouldn't be DMing :P

BESW

I've had a lot of really awesome people play TRPGs with me over the years.

Sos

For how long have you been DMing?

BESW

It's a group thing. We tell better stories when we tell them together. When I'm trying to lead everyone down my story path, it's never as interesting simply because it's just one brain instead of four or six brains.

[rummages]

D&D 3.5, January or February of 2005.

Sos

wow, kudos to you!

BESW

(I was a GM for several months before I got to run a player character that summer.)

Sos

8:49 AM

May I ask how you've done it so far? Mostly IRL friends playing with you? Do you also look for unknown players? And online?

BESW

We've got people here who've been GMing for longer than I've been alive, and others who've been GMing for a relatively short time. Practice can help hone a skill but it requires reflection, study, and openness to being wrong and learning from mistakes--which means some people get a lot more skill in a lot less time than others can.

Hrm. My time in games, sorted by interfaces, is sorta chopped up into periods.

Sos

hum?

BESW

From 2005 to 2012, it was all or almost all physical in-person gaming with people I already knew reasonably well, or at least friends-of-friends.

Then I started using text-chat, voice-chat, video-chat, and shared Google documents, to include friends who weren't on the island. A couple of games were held here in chat (check out our beta tests of the Fate system by scrolling down to the EF conversations in that link), but a lot of that era was a couple friends in Australia in their living room, video chatting with my local friends in my living room.

I tried using tools like Roll20 and Storium but they never worked very well for me.

I've done a couple of game tables at a local convention, which is the only time I've ever gamed with total random strangers.

These days when I game, I'm mostly doing it over Discord voice chat with a shared Google docs sheet and sometimes a dice bot in Discord.

Sos

Wow, you have a bit of everything on your belt!

Ok, I have a hard one now for you.

I've been learning by reading all the suggestions in here (yours and from others), and watching a few youtube channels (How to be a great game master and Matthew Colville, and the short tutorials on Critical Role - for some reason, their campaigns never caught on me, seem to polished and perfect :) )

Yet, I'd like to ask you: if there is one resource (a tutorial or book or anything) on how to become much better as GM, what would you recommend?

I'm aware it is very opinion based question

BESW

Lady Blackbird. It tells you about safety tools, asking questions and taking your players' answers seriously, embracing failure as fun, centering character drama over setpieces... it's just a beautiful little nugget of GMing praxis.

3

Otherwise--there are some game designers whose ouvre is just lessons. [rummages]

Games that Make You Think: A Crash Course in TTRPG Design a collection by Takuma Okada.

doppelgreener

9:08 AM

@BESW <3

Sos

Sorry, which one is Lady Blackbird? On youtube there are a series of music videos, and only found this for D&D

If you could please share a link for Lady Blackbird I'd appreciate it too

BESW

@Sos That's the game, yes. It's not D&D, it's a fully contained system/setting/adventure module. This link is more up to date.

Sos

oh!

doppelgreener

I really like Kamola's story.

BESW

Now I gotta go make some dinner. ttfn

Sos

9:10 AM

@BESW thanks a ton!

doppelgreener

@Sos also just in case you're wondering—yes, that 14-page PDF is the entire game. :D

Sos

@doppelgreener I will go through it! Hoping this will give me some clues on how to become better in the long run, more than looking for a new adventure right now - not sure if you have seen our conversation above, but I'm in a bit of a pickle right now ahah

doppelgreener

The bits you'll be looking for are mainly on the playing+running the game pages, though the way the game works is also fascinating and worth running or playing in as an exercise sometime.

Script Change is on the Playing the Game page, which is mainly player-facing, although Script Change itself is for any participant—including the GM

Sos

thanks a lot!

doppelgreener

9:28 AM

The use of an episodic structure given the gaps between sessions you're facing seems very appropriate

It means people have to remember the general picture but not precisely what they did last session or what state they were in when it ended, because you're starting fresh. You just have to remember the changes that last session made to the general picture or how the status quo has been shaken up, and notes can do that pretty well.

Sos

Yes, I agree with you. I am still not entirely sure how this will play out in practice, but perhaps because I didnt give it enough thought yet

I may still use the campaign setting and main maps, but then adapt the whole thing to be driven towards the PCs stories with the final dragon battle as background

doppelgreener

Atomic Robo structures itself in terms of comic book scenes, issues, and volumes, which is not a bad structure metaphor. An issue is a self-contained adventure with a handful of scenes which for the most part resolves itself by the end. It also gives me a rule of thumb of how much content I should be putting in there.

(A volume is a major story arc consisting of several issues.)

@Sos So in the stories we've done that are episodic, our characters mostly have agency to express where they want to go next or what they want to do next. Frequently they had a HQ. We skipped travel because we didn't have the time to waste on it—if you wanted to be in that city over there this adventure, we started the session with you having already made the several hours/days travel and now you're in media res. If you beat up anyone on the way here, that's just prologue.

This also goes very well with asking your players what they're interested in, in general and between sessions. Your players can inform you where they're interested in going next and you can construct something to support that which also responds to their goals.

In the scope of Atomic Robo, characters get to restock or pick up new equipment from their HQ. In the scope of D&D, this means supplies would be purchased between sessions; the heroes have already taken care of their inventory. Significant stuff can of course be purchased during the adventure, but that's precious time, so that's something to make sure it's good and worth spending the time on, like a flaming sword someone's trying to pawn off because it keeps burning their house down.

Carcer

If your format's not quite so episodic, I've found that if you can swing it it's helpful to try and plan so that the group make big decisions about where they're going to go or what they're going to do next at the end of sessions, so you know what you should prepare for the next one

doppelgreener

Right! There's clean-slate episodes where episodes start from a mostly clean slate, and then there's more linear (not as in railroaded) stories like Avatar: the Last Airbender which are episodic but every episode is necessarily moving the heroes along a long-term path. (The story can evolve just as much over time in either format, so they're constantly developing the story in either case.) Necessarily the episodes skip forward to the next interesting bit, without dawdling on travel time.

AncientSwordRage

\oo//

doppelgreener

9:43 AM

@AncientSwordRage Good morning!

AncientSwordRage

How're things today

doppelgreener

Hehehehe

Going well!

The main benefit of focusing on episodic adventures is you're aiming for things to wrap up and conclude by the end of the session. That's the important part because it helps keep the next session exciting—you're not starting the session finishing the second half of a combat, you're starting the session on something new and fun.

AncientSwordRage

@doppelgreener Going well, or welly going, amirite?

doppelgreener

@AncientSwordRage ... yes! :D

AncientSwordRage

thats all my brain addled sleep can manage right now

words above can be rearranged as appropriate

I hear noises upstairs although my wife said she was going to sleep after being up most of the night....

Sos

9:52 AM

Sorry, I was afk for a bit, let me read everything

BESW

An alternative to episodic adventures is a log of some sort.

I don't have any successful experience with that but I've seen people saying it's useful to have the players maintain an adventure log between sessions.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW Captain's Log, last session we....

^that sort of thing?

BESW

Yeah. Or maintain a campaign wikia. Or

Carcer

yeah, I actually host a mediawiki instance for the Dragon Age game my partner GMs.

BESW

> My Dearest Matilda, my heart aches from our separation. I am enclosing a souvenir of our latest encounter, the tooth of an owlbear which ambushed us while we were making camp...

Sos

9:59 AM

@doppelgreener those seem like good suggestions. But all I'm seeing is that I would need to revamp the whole campaign (I'm following a premade), which is fine ofc, as long as the players are happy. So each session will not be focused on solving the campaign but rather answering the inner demons of each character, with the ending as a possible fight with the end dragon in this campaign

BESW

You can also consider something like Lady Blackbird's "refreshment scenes" as between-session roleplay interludes which give smaller groups of players opportunities to explore their characters' interactions over text or voice chats without furthering the action in ways that other players would feel left out of.

Sos

@BESW Yes, I've been thinking on something to do between sessions. Some PC development during downtime , possibly associated with some IRL activities: e.g. if you go jogging 2 times this week, your PC works towards becoming proficient in some athletic ability.

BESW

Line breaks break most markdown.

Sos

(thanks! I was struggling there) But the role playing probably would work better, as they do love that component

so let's recap:
1. smaller, episodic sessions, mostly focused on PCs backstories
2. in between sessions role playing
3. in between sessions proficiency activities
4. long-term goal of the campaign is kept (defeat the dragon)

doppelgreener

@Sos solving a campaign doesn't come at odds from exploring characters personally—you do both at once. But given it's a premade you probably can't do the latter as well. That's not a necessary component however, you can just focus on the adventure trail during episodes.

But, the premade adventure may not lend itself to episodic play.

BESW

10:06 AM

It was my experience with 4e that Wizards doesn't think a lot about table-level pacing when designing modules.

Sos

@doppelgreener well, I had in my mind how the whole premade was in line with their backstories. 1 PC had its family/friend killed by orcs, hates them. 1 had its master kidnapped. 1 was cursed and is trying to revert the curse. In my mind, all of this was caused by the Talos cult or something, who is also responsible for Cryovain the dragon who the PCs must defeat.

After defeating him, the PCs would learn that all their backstories is actually pinned on Talos. How to solve it? I didn't work it that far :)

doppelgreener

@Sos Then that's great!

That's perfect

I mean, as long as you have player buy-in and they find it interesting to explore.

But overall that means as you face the campaign content, you're also facing personal content

BESW

So, the story of Kamola Prince-Maker? that wasn't the campaign.

Sos

But my challenge is now how to make it a bit more focused on their characters stories: seeing as the sessions are so far apart, I dont see them progressing over this campaign to defeat the dragon and only solve their issues after that. Or it will take 3 years to finish

I may have to rush it a bit. For instance, the next time they face Orcs, the orcs will disclose some important information about the overall thing and help one of the PCs to go closer to its aim

BESW

The campaign was about the clash of two expanding empires, and how a lich's attempt to exploit their conflict so he could become a god, accidentally cracked open the walls of the world to let in unspeakable powers. The PCs were secret agents for one of the empires, got caught up in the lich's plan, and wound up being the only people positioned to stop the unspeakable powers.
In the process they kinda accidentally destroyed the enemy empire, but too late for their own empire to survive the aftermath of the war.

doppelgreener

10:14 AM

@Sos So the thing about using your players' goals to inform your sessions means those aren't necessarily separate. Some goals will be side story stuff—like if your character wants to find a really cool spear, that'll just happen along the way but may or may not be inherently tied to campaign resolution. However, that time you have to break into a castle? Rather than Generic Castle #47, you can make it the castle of the Evil Stepfamily your character expressed a desire to confront somehow.

Your character can therefore explore their own story notes naturally as part of handling the adventure, likely addressing and resolving their arc prior to campaign completion or as part of it.

BESW

Kamola's place in all this? His nation was the last free nation in the world not under the rule of either empire. It was conquered by level five and his king forced him to work for the conquering nation as a spy. Ten levels later he returned to his nation and retired, fifteen levels before the campaign ended.

Sos

@doppelgreener right! that makes sense!

BESW

Kamola's story is a lot more interesting than the campaign plot, because it was personal and emotional. The plot gave us opportunities to tell his story.

Sos

@BESW oh so he solved it all way before the end of the campaign

BESW

Yeah. The campaign and the character's personal arcs don't have to follow the same pace.

The character who defected from the tyrannical empire? He'd made a deal with an elf queen to get powers so he could escape (he was a warlock), in exchange for an unnamed future favor. SHe called in that favor around level 11, it was resolved by level 13 or 14, and he traded in his warlock levels for paladin levels for the rest of the 30-level campaign.

Sos

10:18 AM

Oh wow, this gave me a really nice idea!

doppelgreener

In our Atomic Robo game, I played an artificial lifeform, and another player was playing the scientist who made her. We acknowledged there were ... issues between them ... but didn't directly address them at the start. Somewhere around the middle of the story we coincidentally had an opportunity to dig into them during the course of play and resolve some of that stuff, but that was a handful of sessions, and that personal arc was over long before that particular story was over.

And, notably, just occurred in the course of conversations and interactions we were having anyway.

BESW

Yeah! The character drama enhanced the plot drama, because getting into an argument with your Science Dad is maybe not best done in the middle of a stealth mission to infiltrate Master Appa-Tax's castle.

AncientSwordRage

None of my games have ever gotten this far, feeling jealous but in a positive way.

Like a) someone's really having good campaigns which is awesome

and b) one day I may be able to take part in something similar

Sos

@BESW At the end of Gnomenguard, they talk with 2 married kings. It can be that one of them was actually also cursed by the same entity that cursed my PC.

This will already point to some clues on where to go to revert the curse. But I'm thinking the player should then make a choice: having its curse reversed and lose something important (its magical poodle fiend that has been with him all his life) or stay as he is. The kings choose to stay as they were, or they would loose someone who was dear to them (the other king)

Ah, I like this a lot!

It's a pity they don't get to play until 7 weeks from now

BESW

I'll caution against GMs presenting "you must make a terrible choice" dilemmas.

It's usually frustrating at best, and can be forced and condescending, like we don't want the players to actually feel good about succeeding.

It's a powerful story tool, but usually inappropriate for wish-fulfillment power fantasy stories like D&D is usually geared to tell.

Sos

10:31 AM

Yeah, you're right

BESW

I've done it, and it never worked well.

Sometimes my players would find a dilemma like that, and then it was cool. But if I was forcing it on them? Nah.

Sos

Need to think better how to add to the drama of the situation, other than "go here > kill that > curse lifted"

BESW

That's... basically what we've been talking about, actually.

Contemporary D&D is a game where the player characters are basically assumed to succeed at most of what they do in combat. And that's as intended, it's a feature, don't h*ck with it.

But you can put drama and stakes around the combat by... making characters flawed people who are learning and growing, who care about things and want things other than "kill bad guys to get better at killing bad guys."

Killing monsters to kill monsters better is the big mechanical play loop, it's fine. It's just not the story. D&D doesn't give us any mechanics for drama. No "I care," no "I want," no "I must." That's all up to the group, and admitting that is one of the system's biggest struggles (and why I respect 4e most out of all the editions).

Sos

What does 4e have in special about that?

BESW

It admits that it's not a story game.

It does tactical combat really well and then explicitly gets out of the way for everything else and tells the group we're on our own instead of half-h*cking a social system for factions or diplomacy or whatever.

Sos

10:39 AM

right

BESW

Put it this way: have you seen Star Wars Episode Six, "The Empire Strikes Back"? The last act of that film has two things happening: Luke is trying to redeem his father, and everyone else is trying to blow up the Death Star.

Which is more important to the fate of the galaxy?
Which is more emotionally resonant?

Will Luke's success or failure at redeeming Darth Vader change the odds of his friends blowing up the Death Star in any way?

Sos

I see what you mean! both are solved together, even if they are not exactly dependent on one another

BESW

Blowing up the Death Star is defeating the dragon at the end of the adventure. It's important to the world, but in terms of the story we know it's gonna happen and it's awesome when it does but there's not much tension about whether it'll happen--only how cool it'll be when it does.

But Luke confronting Darth Vader and begging him to be his dad again? We don't know how that'll play out. We care about it, we want it to turn out right, but we know that the galaxy will be saved from the Death Star no matter how Luke's personal journey get resolved.

Sos

@BESW You know what I feel the bottom line of all of this is?

That DMing is super hard :)

BESW

It is! That's one reason I love games which encourage me to share the tasks of GMing with the group.

(BTW: when you read Lady Blackbird, see if you can tell what the game thinks is the most dramatic thing a character can do.)

Sos

10:48 AM

The one player in the group that had played D&D before, and had played as DM for a while, gave me one tip before I started: dont do all the work youself. I'm starting to realize that is a very good tip

BESW

No joke, I burned out on GMing after six years of D&D 3.5 and a year and a half of D&D 4e.

And toward the end of my time in 4e I was offloading everything I could to other players: they were tracking initiative and conditions, and I wasn't even rolling dice much anymore.

Nowadays I'm comfortable with GMing in a much different style (cf Lady Blackbird) but I also love GMless games, and GMed games which do innovative things with player agency to distribute creative tasks in non-traditional ways.

I'm doing my best not to just tell you to get out of D&D before it eats you alive, because I know that's not everyone's experience, but it was mine and I've seen it happen to other people. Like I said a while ago, I'm still unlearning D&D habits that were never actually of service to me or my friends.

Sos

Sorry to ask, but what do you mean? I thought you were playing D&D, or are you GMing for another game? D&D is the only TTRPG I know
And it's the first time I hear about GMless games

well, unless you mean a standard tabletop game

BESW

Ummm. My profile has a list of the TRPGs I've played at least one session of.

doppelgreener

Way before I started playing with BESW, I was playing D&D 4e. As he mentioned, it's a combat system that gets out of the way for everything else like storytelling. But my group was finding that the combat was the least interesting part of our sessions, and everything else was the more fun parts. Around the same time, Fate Core had just came out, and that was narrative-oriented and mechanically valued everything around our narratives.

BESW

I haven't played D&D (except for a brief campaign because a very good friend asked me to once) since early 2013.

Greener and I have been talking about Atomic Robo; it's a TRPG that uses the Fate Core system.

doppelgreener

10:58 AM

It also valued physical conflict! But it used the same tools and structures as anything else for combat, so physical conflict was netiher emphasized nor minimized. It was just there, if and when we wanted it. It took a while to learn that it also handles physical conflict in much more versatile ways than D&D, and doesn't give it any specific importance to advancing the story.

So we decided to move to that, and I haven't looked back since.

On that "advancing the story" thing: a common first experience of Fate players who also played D&D is that they're not sure how to advance the narrative in the first session, so they decide to seek out a fight, because fights always advance things in D&D somehow. But the fight is kind of a drag and then it finishes and nothing has actually changed... because, well, it had no narrative reason to happen and leads to no narrative or even mechanical change, and that's very opposite to D&D.

BESW

I wish I had enough character space in my profile to link to all the amazing games that don't have rpg.se tags.

doppelgreener

Fate wants you to have an all-out physical confrontation only when you'd, you know, actually get into a fight because the narrative leaves that as your only or best option. This means it values you just trying to talk your way past things, running away, sneaking around, negotiating, or simply knocking out the guards so you can go past them. It also means most things just don't involve physical conflict, which is, you know, kind of unsurprising? Most things don't in life.

Like, Discworld narratives involve a lot of running around and puzzling over things and talking to people and so on. There's not a lot of "and now let's fight to the death". Stories rarely need such a thing.

BESW

Or, you can have lots of physical confrontations in a Fate game but not use the full complexity of conflict mechanics to describe them.

Sos

Yeah, I see what you mean. I do love the fighting, and if it was up to me, I'd be happy with the dungeon crawling aspect of it. But as I previously noted, 1 person in my group particularly likes the role playing, and the fighting not so much

BESW

Like, in D&D if you get into a fight you use the same mechanics no matter how important the fight is.

In Fate, the complexity of the mechanics you use scales to how dramatically important the scene is, rather than what's physically happening in it.

doppelgreener

11:05 AM

@Sos I'd be interested to know what you think of Lady Blackbird then, really! The first session involves all manner of potential fights, but it looks completely different to D&D.

Sos

@doppelgreener thanks, I will read it as soon as I can! You have both been talking so nicely of it, I'm really curious now

BESW

I'd be fascinated to see someone take a fully formed D&D module and run it in something like 6e or Quest or --hah!-- Swords & Scrolls.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I've done this when playing a one shot in a system I didn't know, it worked surprisingly well

BESW

...but given the deep thematic problems with D&D as a concept, I'm not volunteering.

@AncientSwordRage Yeah, it was pretty great! And giving players more insight into the guts of GMing, laid groundwork for them trying out GMing later.

47

A: How do I convince my group to try a new system without always having to DM it first?

I've had similar challenges, both with getting group buy-in to try new systems and with getting people to feel comfortable GMing anything at all. My solution was a long-game process of changing the "landscape" of how people at the table viewed their role in the game. I didn't set out to delibera...

AncientSwordRage

11:22 AM

@BESW your mind reading powers have come very far

BESW

?

AncientSwordRage

@BESW I was thinking of asking/looking for a question like that recently

BESW

I think it's the only answer I've ever written that made someone else delete their answer.

BESW

11:40 AM

Re: Greener's talking about Fate, and Lady Blackbird, I think one of the ways they make combat more interesting than D&D is that a PC's competency in those games is directly related to the PC's character. Their history, goals, values, and relationships define what the character will get into conflicts about, and how they act inside those conflicts.

doppelgreener

Right. Also, despite what I'm saying about fights being something you don't tend to do... you can have lots of fights. They just have to matter. D&D has you have lots of meaningless fights with various assembles of forgettable goblins and skeletons and so on, because the players have to get XP and loot and that's how. Fate isn't interested in the characters doing meaningless things that matter to nobody

BESW

Like, in Lady Blackbird, Naomi Bishop gets to re-roll if she's protecting someone while Cyrus Vance can grant other people re-rolls if they're following his orders. If they were characters in TV show you could watch them fight and know something about who they are.

doppelgreener

In Fate if you get into a fight it's because it matters to all participants. (Because if it doesn't matter to your opponents, they don't have to respond with also fighting.)

BESW

In D&D you watch people fight and you... know what they can do, but the chances of it actually giving you a sense of what they value, how they feel about their friends, what kind of person they are? Maybe, with some characters? You could get a broad sense of the values anybody with that class build would share with them?

Sos

you guys bashing against D&D hurts my feelings :(

im joking

it is still my favorite tabletop game ever. I dont really like the traditional table top games, since they are so limited in what you can do. Roll dice, draw a card, etc, it sounds very boring since it's so luck based

I can see that being a bit the case in D&D, but, not really

(thinking how my PCs were on the verge of dying on the last session, and I didnt count a crit from one of the monsters or one of them would really die)

doppelgreener

11:55 AM

Neither of us are trying to say you can't or shouldn't enjoy or play D&D. But as far as being the gateway to our hobby goes, it comes with a lot of problems that don't go acknowledged.

Recognising game system issues and limitations is an important part of choosing which game to play. You don't get out Monopoly when what you really want to play is Risk.

BESW

I think there's a lot of really awful stuff tied up in D&D, specifically, and generally in the kinds of TTRPGs that are mimicking it. But I don't want to tell people they're bad for playing it. Peoples' relationship with media is none of my business. No media is flawless and everyone's context is their own. I will point out that there's usually a different game which does the things a person likes about D&D, better and with less baggage.

Sos

eheh I know I know :) I fully understand, perhaps it's my favorite game only because that's the only TTRPG I've ever played ahaha

BESW

That's valid!

Sos

Guys, a question about Lady Blackbird: these "Refreshments" are something I had never thought about. A flashback? whaat
But how do you implement it with your own parties? If a flashback is on a PC's story, how did you involve the other PCs?

BESW

Like I said, I played almost nothing but D&D for the first... seven years... of my time in TRPGs, and the first few times I did try something else it drove me back to D&D.

Not a flashback, but an example of a refreshment scene from a con game I ran:

Jun 30 '19 at 9:42, by BESW

Even "resting" is focused on character-driven story: you refresh your expendable resources by having a short scene between two or more PCs that explores something about their characters and relationships. One of my favorite moments ever was when, after a particularly difficult scene, one PC turned to the other and asked, "Is this really worth it for [other PC's goal]?" and they honestly said "I'm not sure anymore."

Kamola the Prince-Maker

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