TRPG General Chat

BESW

01:00

@AncientSwordRage There's a lot of nifty emergent-surprise mechanics floating around Fate games, but I'm not sure any of them quite match the feeling of finding an unintended exploit in pre-made content.

(also gonna make a quick grumble about the problems with canonizing Forge-era naming conventions)

AncientSwordRage

01:12

@BESW I'm not even after exploits

@BESW Forge-era?

BESW

> The principle is named after Paul Czege, based on a comment he made to Vincent Baker at The Forge after playtesting one of Baker's games.

The Forge was an indie game design forum that got a lot of activity in the early 2000s, mostly around designing for bleed (basically proving "system matters" by writing mechanics tailored to make players uncomfortable).

It had a lot of very smart people sharing ideas, but their learning is rather inaccessible because the dialog was quickly saturated with impenetrable jargon and cross-referencing, to the point that some games were nigh unplayable by people who didn't already know the context of the Forge's ideas about games.

Jargon, often first named in jest, became reified through repeated use but the terminology (like "the [Name] Principle" or "Theory of Chalk Outlines") gave no clue as to what it meant without already knowing the original context it emerged from. This pattern of insular dialog isn't unique to the Forge (see: "Oberoni Fallacy" and "Stormwind Fallacy") but the Forge's credentials as a Legitimate Cauldron of Design Insight lent legitimacy to that obfuscation.

(Compare "Surprise by Complexity" which is a name that gives a very clear indication of what it might be about)

AncientSwordRage

01:50

Jul 21 '21 at 1:30, by BESW

...I have Strong Feelings about using individuals' names and the terminology of philosophical logic like "Oberoni Fallacy." It makes a simple and important concept harder to access by gating it behind cultural context and educational background.

I thought you might bring it up (and rightly so) when I pointed you to Jadasc's answer. But I'd completely forgotten by now

BESW

Hmmm.

I do have an example of mid-game re-analysis of a mechanic in Fate to great effect, but I'm not sure it's what you're after.

I'd given the villain a character aspect No second chances, to represent that that he didn't give enemies second chances and that he had no regenerations (this was a Doctor Who game and the villain as a Time Lord). I invoked it a few times to represent desperation and ruthlessness.

Then at the very end of the climactic finale in which the PCs had dramatically foiled his plan but spent all but one of their fate points doing so and he'd gotten most of those fate points so he was getting up to try again... the player with the very last fate point spent it on No second chances to make him give up.

AncientSwordRage

@BESW that's cool

BESW

That kind of re-contextualizing established truths is where a lot of great surprise comes from in Fate.

Trogdor's character Doctor Light was a terrible father figure, but thought he was great. So when the cartoonishly evil Queen Vulturra pretended to be Doctor Light for a few sessions, and all she knew about him was what she'd learned by reading the Doctor's mind... well, suddenly "Doctor Light" was a surprisingly good father figure!

@AncientSwordRage Sometimes I think about writing up that campaign as an adventure packet, but the target audience would be vanishingly small.

Glazius

02:27

@BESW The commonality in both these cases being that you're working off of someone else's aspects. That also affords you a certain amount of liberty that you often don't get by trying to extend your own aspects, since part of defining those aspects is ensuring they're properly scoped by going over their rough limits with people at the table.

Getting cheeky with somebody else's aspects - great, let's see where this goes. Getting cheeky with your own aspects - god, what are you trying to pull this time?

BESW

Right, and that's why mechanics like brainstorming and mission briefing are effective cauldrons of surprise.

They prompt people to generate truths specifically for group manipulation, so they also give permission and encouragement to play with each others' toys because there's less sense of violating a boundary.

I feel like it's a very different sort of thing from the D&D-like surprise ASG describes in the question though, so I'm struggling to figure out if/how Fate can produce that without designer-made features to mash together.

Glazius

02:57

aside from using Fate systems with decent amounts of designer-made features, like Dresden Files or Atomic Robo.

be a Science Banter Ghost, use your postmorterm studies of Metaphysics to fly around since you're so bad at being a ghost

BESW

Right, hence "without designer-made features" like my example above.

BESW

03:09

Part of the difference, I think, lies in where the surprise occurs, geographically.

A lot of D&D surprise happens away from the table, during preparation for the game.

Fate's surprises tend to be rooted in the play itself and the interplay at the table.

BESW

03:46

"Top 10 TTRPGs For Fantasy Fans" by Declan Lowthian for CBR. D&D is the most popular fantasy TTRPG, but there are plenty of other games out there for fans of magic and myth.

@BardicWizard #LHSrescue: household linens edition

STICKS & STONES (& LEAVES) by Mx. Wellman. The game where you play with sticks and stones (and leaves)!

Chalice by Monkey's Paw Games. A game of Arthurian knights searching for the Holy Grail.

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goodguy5

15:24

Finally picking up another online game - I'm hoping it actually gets off the ground.

I asked the DM if they'd be okay with a swarm beastmaster and they said yes, so I think I'll do that

Thomas Markov

I engaged in a bit of creative problem solving in my last session.

We're being pursued by a revenant of a giant yeti. Some sort of curse connected to one of the party members. Every time we kill it, it comes back in a few days and attacks us again.

So this time we tried something different. We polymorphed it into a rabbit, stuffed into the bag of holding, then dropped the spell, rupturing the bag and sending the yeti to the Astral Plane.

So maybe it will take more than a few days for him to find his way back.

KorvinStarmast