TRPG General Chat

10:00 PM

If you're new to the system, I find that minis are very helpful to learn how to play, but they aren't strictly necessary.

BESW

@SevenSidedDie On the other hand, everyone seemed to have fun and the dwarf's player took things with resigned good humour for the first few character deaths.

@Tablesalt Hi!

SevenSidedDie

@BESW Ah, I recall that answer now. Yeah, being overwhelmed by the bookkeeping is definitely a thing that can impair decisions.

hoth

What about tracking experience and levelling? I've read a couple of threads on SE that say some GMs just decide when to let the party level up, others precisely record each experience point gained with each swing of sword / axe/ mace

BESW

@SevenSidedDie I never thought I'd get a chance to turn that anecdote into an answer, but I'm glad I did. It was very formative for me as a GM.

@hoth Aye, it's totally up to how the group wants to do things.

I started out tracking XP carefully, but then discovered I preferred to use it as a pacing mechanism.

Metool

@SevenSidedDie Under which tag can I find that stuff, by the way?

hoth

10:02 PM

Pacing mechanism?

SevenSidedDie

@hoth If you're playing West Marches style, it should be rigidly-tracked XP.

hoth

@SevenSidedDie why?

SevenSidedDie

@hoth Because self-directed play is the point of the West Marches style. XP + treasure + discovery are the triumvirate of motives to explore and the crux of how the players will decide what risks to take and which to not. If they don't have control over their own struggle to level up via their in-game choices, that hobbles the style of play considerably. You risk them deciding that it doesn't matter what they do, they'll get rewards no matter where they go, so they switch on cruise control.

hoth

That's a great answer.

So how would you advise tracking XP if I were using a ruleset like PF?

BESW

Spam in the Stack! flag and delete votes as you're able, please.

Grubermensch

10:06 PM

Usually experience is recorded at the conclusion of an encounter or other challenge.

SevenSidedDie

@hoth The standard way is to note it as they earn it, and then distribute it at the end of either a) the session or b) the excusion. (B) motivates them to get home sooner, which provides a nice ebb-and-flow to their exploration. (A) means they can stay out in the wilderness for longer periods of time.

Grubermensch

Awarding for each hit is the way of madness -- you're not a video game and you shouldn't try to be (at least in that way).

hoth

@Grubermensch thank heavens for that :)

BESW

I usually did it at the end of each session.

But 3.5 XP maths were a nightmare.

hoth

Are there some pointers in the PF rules for rewarding XP? I haven't been all the way through it yet.

SevenSidedDie

10:08 PM

@hoth Yep, you'll get to them.

Tablesalt

When I ran 3.5, I calculated XP at the end of each session. I always thought that awarding XP at each encounter would motivate players more, in terms of giving them a sense of progress mid-session.

Hi everybody, by the way.

hoth

HI @Tablesalt

SevenSidedDie

I'm not intimately familiar with PF, but it's based on 3.5 and it has very explicit XP award text.

@Tablesalt Heya.

BESW

@Tablesalt [wave]

hoth

Sorry @Tablesalt you kinda contradict yourself there. Did you award XP at the end of a session (i.e. home time) or after each encounter (i.e. fight)?

Grubermensch

10:09 PM

@Tablesalt One unhappy consequence of rewarding mid session (besides the mathematical time-sink) is that players might get sidetracked dreaming about their new powers at level-up and pay less attention to matters at hand.

SevenSidedDie

@Tablesalt The trouble I find with that approach is that the players tend to get number-focused in the wrong way, grubbing for every last point (and hunting down rats and things for them). Awarding them in bigger chunks keeps the numbers away from the action, but provides a big "attaboy!" affirmation of their adventures that keeps them motivate to go get more.

BESW

@hoth Sounds like he did the former but thought doing the latter would have a positive effect.

(But even if I thought it'd be good, I'd never have had the patience to do the XP maths after every encounter--and it'd interrupt the flow of the session for my players.)

(Other groups might have different experiences though.)

SevenSidedDie

@BESW I only did XP math in realtime with earlier editions, but the math in those is way easier.

hoth

I think that the last thing you want is players to start messing around with their characters and adding new skills / feats half way through a session

Grubermensch

When I played and ran AD&D, it was always awarded after the encounter. The math in AD&D was simpler, though. And level-ups could only occur in town with significant downtime.

BESW

10:12 PM

4e XP maths were easier too. 3.PF seems deliberately overcomplex.

SevenSidedDie

@hoth A common table rule (and common enough in actual game rules) is that you only get the level-up between adventures anyway, regardless of when you award the XP.

user61230

I had a GM once who did XP tabulation before sessions, which made it significantly easier. He just took off XP for things we missed.

user61230

And awarded XP after each encounter.

BESW

And now, well. Fate Core's character progression is thankfully maths-free. When I finally run Princes' Kingdom I'll let you guys know what I think about its progression mechanics.

Grubermensch

@Emrakul more recent editions kind of encourage that (at least for combat) by planning encounters based on the XP value of the adversaries.

hoth

10:14 PM

Does anyone have experience of players with higher level characters being joined by players with very low level, newish characters and how that affects encounters?

SevenSidedDie

@Emrakul My games have always been less planned than that, so that wasn't an option. It was easy enough to say that the 900xp of creatures split four ways is 225xp each, anyway.

BESW

Speaking of which, @trogdor, next Saturday's game will have you, Ben, and Adib. I'd like to try running a Princes' Kingdom game, maybe with a pony skin.

@hoth We've got some questions about that, I'm sure... The short answer is: don't.

user61230

@hoth Would not recommend. There are ways around it, but the tendency is to let the high-powered characters do all the killin'. Ends up being not quite heroic for the weaker players.

Grubermensch

(I am now reminded of the dreadfully confusing AD&D bonus XP percentage rules)

SevenSidedDie

@hoth Yeah. In D&D 3 and later, it doesn't work very well. The power curve is steep, so power disparity between even close levels is high. In earlier editions with flatter power curves (also, it seems, as it will be in 5e), having disparate levels was never a problem.

@BESW You found a copy of Princes Kingdom?!

hoth

10:15 PM

Does anyone know if the text in this chat room persists, or if there's a way to download it?

SevenSidedDie

@hoth It persists, but no easy way to download it that I know of.

user61230

@Seven Yeah, that makes sense. I wasn't too much a fan of it, since it made encounters somewhat railroad-y.

hoth

Anyone used Roll20? Any thoughts good / bad?

BESW

@SevenSidedDie Lo and behold.

SevenSidedDie

@hoth No experience.

DuckTapeAl

10:17 PM

@hoth Roll20 is pretty nice. I used it as a player, and it was a pretty solid site.

There's a lot of ability to customize there.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW Oh yeah. It was OOP for ages.

DuckTapeAl

If you're the kind of person to deep dive into a site's features, you have a lot of power.

BESW

...wait, it seems to be gone from the purchase page again.

user61230

@hoth You may be looking for this button. You also might be interested in this feature request.

hoth

@DuckTapeAl if you had to choose between playing face to face over a table and playing online via Roll20 what would you go for?

DuckTapeAl

10:17 PM

Face to face.

I've tried doing the online game thing a half dozen times, and it just doesn't work for me.

SevenSidedDie

@hoth Over on the right there should be a "room" clickable, with a dropdown menu that leads to transcripts and bookmarking options.

DuckTapeAl

That's not to say it's impossible, just that I've never had a good experience with it.

BESW

@SevenSidedDie Ah, here we go.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW I see the PDF on IPR, it's all good. I am so getting it.

hoth

@Emrakul @SevenSidedDie thanks just tried that link and it does persist, they have full transcripts going back a few days at leat

Amazing what the cloud based world can do

Grubermensch

10:19 PM

My experience with Roll20 is that it's good for games where you get a lot of prep time. If you like winging it, it doesn't work as well.

BESW

@SevenSidedDie It looks so good. I'm thinking I might be able to use it almost unchanged for my My Little Neuroses system.

user61230

@hoth It actually goes back to the first day!

SevenSidedDie

@BESW It's a hack of Dogs in the Vineyard, so it has excellent pedigree.

BESW

Everything on Stack Exchange chat persists forever and is automagically seeded to the Googles.

3

hoth

@Emrakul that is pretty amazing. I like your handle BTW, one of my greatest regrets as a Magic player was trading away my promo Emrakul from the Eldrazi pre-release for some jank rares.

BESW

10:20 PM

@SevenSidedDie I was not as pleased with DitV; played a couple sessions and while the design ideas seemed nice, the setting gave me enough qualms that I needed a bucket for them.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW And so the Ark of Knowledge will persist to the End Times and help the Roleplayers of the New Age climb back toward the light of Civilised Playing that much sooner.

user61230

@hoth Thank you! And yeah, I sympathize.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW Yeah, the setting is provocative and doesn't work for lots of people. Hence why the Princes Kingdom is so exciting. Nevermind my 6yo is about ready for it.

People have similar qualms about Apocalypse World, but the engine is amazing enough that those same people like other hacks like Dungeon World.

hoth

Chaps I'm going I've learned a lot tonight so thanks for shooting the **** with me I will be back on again soon so hope to speak to you all again soon.

DuckTapeAl

Peace.

BESW

10:23 PM

@hoth Take care. See you around.

SevenSidedDie

@hoth Very welcome! Good luck and good fun.

Tablesalt

@hoth see you later

user61230

@Gruber I think that might be a property of (almost) all online roleplaying, honestly. I haven't played many online games that weren't freeform and could be prepped quickly.

user61230

@hoth Seeya!

BESW

I'm thinking that some kind of unnatural concoction of Princes' Kingdom and Pilgrims of the Flying Temple will be the ultimate form of my pony system.

But I need more experience with both those engines first.

SevenSidedDie

10:24 PM

Second mention: spam on the exchange, flag it as spam to auto-kill it, delete vote if you've got 'em.

user61230

Aaaaaand it's gone.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW Pilgrims is a lot of fun and simple under the hood. It works great as an afternoon's one-shot. First time we played was beside a duck pond in a sunny park.

BESW

@SevenSidedDie I've run it once, here on chat.

SevenSidedDie

@Emrakul *high fives*

BESW

There's a transcript in the Back Room, I think.

Grubermensch

10:26 PM

@Emrakul: I basically want a virtual whiteboard, with colored tokens, pips, and numbers that I can hang off of them. A chat window, and a persistent-ish place to type global notes to the players.

SevenSidedDie

@BESW Ooh, yeah, that'd work well. Possibly faster than in person too, since playing and transcribing are folded together.

BESW

I especially like it for my pony system because the idea of having a letter about the lessons you've learned is so perfect.

Metool

I reiterate my question: Under which tag(s) might questions about not using minis be found?

BESW

@Metool Try this search.

user61230

@Metool minifigures, maybe?

Grubermensch

10:28 PM

miniatures ?

BESW

Not every topic can be usefully tagged, but that's why we have a search engine too.

Grubermensch

How does tag... Thank you @Emrakul

user61230

Er, right, that's what I meant to type. @Gruben [tag:miniatures] => miniatures

SevenSidedDie

@Metool Ack, sorry. Will dig them up. I don't know if they're all under one tag.

Metool

Aha.

14

Q: How to reduce minis dependence in d20-based games?

In Pathfinder and similar versions of D&D, there is a lot more miniatures/tactical map dependence than in earlier versions (and in most other RPGs). I am interested in reducing the dependence on miniatures (and by this I mean tokens, M&Ms, or whatever other stand-ins) and tactical maps/battlemats...

SevenSidedDie

10:30 PM

17

Q: Without a map or miniatures, how to best determine line-of-sight, etc?

I think the title says it all. Let's say you're mastering a game without the benefit of miniatures, maps, or any kind of physical representation of the environment. How would you keep track of details like line-of-sight, ranged attack viability, and all the other small nuances which go with creat...

combat

12

Q: D&D Next and "Theatre of the Mind" in combat

My group have been using the play test material for D&D Next. Our target play style for combat encounters would be to use battle boards roughly half the time (when there is enough of interest in play that the tactics are fun to play out), and to skip that with faster "cinematic" combat otherwise....

combat dnd-next

Those are the three I'm thinking of.

Grubermensch

Tragically, the Monte Cook article referenced in the first question appears to have vanished into the ether...

DuckTapeAl

Is there an easy way to find all the old D&D 3.5 blog posts that wizads used to post?

SevenSidedDie

I wonder if these should have a tag invented for the topic. [miniatures] doesn't really suit them all, since they're about not using miniatures and that's not always phrased as "without minis".

@Grubermensch Oh poop. Hm, to the Wayback Machine!

Grubermensch

But nothing is ever dead on the Internet: web.archive.org/web/20080314235150/http://www.montecook.com/…

Ninja'd

DuckTapeAl

I'm trying to do some research on that sorcerer spell slot question I asked a few days ago, and I'm wondering if there was anything on it in the early 3.0 or 3.5 stuff.

SevenSidedDie

10:33 PM

Link fixed.

Grubermensch

Essentially my biggest gripe with Roll20 is how grid-focused it seems to be

That and setting visibility right is hard because there's no way to see what other people see.

user61230

It's hard to make a tabletop simulator that meets the needs of every game. Roll20 just went with the most popular ones.

SevenSidedDie

@DuckTapeAl You could try browsing wizards.com through the Wayback Machine. I don't think many of the direct links are still known, so you might have to do it the hard way using the timeline and just clicking around. Hopefully their robots.txt didn't prevent a lot of it from being scraped.

DuckTapeAl

@SevenSidedDie That's what I was afraid of. Well, I know what I'm doing today!

Grubermensch

@Emrakul: I agree, but at least accomodating gridless maps would be something.

user61230

10:39 PM

Snap-to-grid is one of the best features of the modern user experience, though. Without snap-to-grid, it can be almost impossible for users to place objects where they want them on a 2D plane.

user61230

There's a lot of UX theory, actually, surrounding click targets and drag targets. The user wants to place their cursor in a specific location, and the more specific that location is, the longer it takes to get there.

user61230

It's a lot harder task than it seems to make an intuitive UI without it.

SevenSidedDie

@Grubermensch Does Roll20 not let you use the map space as a whiteboard? That seems like it would have been easy to do.

Grubermensch

@Emrakul Right, and that's good if I want to be specific. But I don't. I actually want to just kind of plop things in roughly.

@SevenSidedDie It supports drawing, but afaik the grid is mandatory. I want to just slide tokens around casually.

user61230

@Gruber That's what snap-to-grid helps everyone do. Though in this case, it might be a good idea to give smaller grid squares, I agree

DuckTapeAl

10:42 PM

@SevenSidedDie It does. Most of the features are focused on the grid, but you can easily just use it as a whiteboard if you want.

Grubermensch

Also, their zoom is broken on Linux, and that has always annoyed me.

</rant>

SevenSidedDie

@Grubermensch Oh yuck. Developer-peoples, it's not hard to test on Linux, the OS is free and can dual-boot off a CD...

user61230

That one is... yeah, an irritation. >_>

DuckTapeAl

It might not be hard to test on Linux, but testing isn't free.

And testing everything on another operating system is not a cheap thing.

The cost of testing on an extra OS has very little to do with teh cost of the OS, and much more to do with the cost of the tester.

And Linux, unfortunately, has such a low market share that you rarely make your money back when you develop with Linux in mind. With some exceptions, of course.

SevenSidedDie

@DuckTapeAl It's true, but the overhead is mostly in the setup, and then it's not much more compared to the existing cost of testing on three browsers on two OSes plus mobile.

@DuckTapeAl For most things, yeah, but there's no excuse for webapps.

If it's broken in a Linux browser only, ten to one it's an error that shouldn't be in the webapp to begin with.

DuckTapeAl

10:54 PM

@SevenSidedDie Yeah, probably, but it still comes down to the comparison between how much it costs to test on a couple browsers in Linux versus the amount of money you will make on Linux users.

In addition, people who use Linux are typically savvy enough to be able to dual-boot to solve OS-related issues. Whenever I tell my Linux using friends that I like Windows, they tell me how easy it is to dual-boot when I want to play games.

SevenSidedDie

@DuckTapeAl If you look at it that way, it's never a good idea, yeah. But if you look at it as a compliance test, it's valuable. With web apps, those kinds of bugs usually point to a mistake that should be corrected on all platforms.

@DuckTapeAl Nobody wants to dual-boot just to make their browser work, though. The supposed universality of the medium is becoming expected, while that's not true of games.

DuckTapeAl

Speaking of my Linux using friends, a buddy of mine told me a joke about Windows, Mac, and Linux usability once.

SevenSidedDie

If chat.RPG was broken on Linux, the developers would be ashamed.

DuckTapeAl

In a Windows house, the ketchup is in the fridge with the rest of the condiments.

In the MAc house, the ketchup is with the hot dog buns.

In the Linux house, they don't have ketchup at all. Just tomatoes, vinegar, and time.

SevenSidedDie

@DuckTapeAl Not inaccurate. :)

DuckTapeAl

10:59 PM

@SevenSidedDie That way, you can make exactly the ketchup that you want.

SevenSidedDie

In the iOS house, you have separate mini bottles of ketchup packed with each meal that can't be used on other meals.

DuckTapeAl

And every other year, the Windows house breaks into the Mac house and steals all the condiments.

Grubermensch

@DuckTapeAl You forgot the spectrogram taped to the fridge which shows you what the final product should be like.

SevenSidedDie

@DuckTapeAl Or your ketchup is pre-made, and it's kept with the bowling pins because they're the same shape.

2

@Grubermensch And the ketchup's label directs you to read the full label conveniently stored in a big box in the attic along with all the other information and operating instructions for the house.

Grubermensch

Organized by length.

DuckTapeAl

11:03 PM

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that I think it's totally understandable to not test on Linux. In a perfect world, it absolutely should be tested there, as it's one of the major OSes, but the amount of time and money that it takes to do that testing is typically not worth it for most purposes.

Given the choice between new features and support for another OS, I'm going to pick new features every day of the week.

SevenSidedDie

And available in six different languages, but only one which has the complete label because it's the "best" language. But that one needs a special reading device, which doesn't have instructions on how to operate it, except in its own manual which also requires that reading device. But it has a tutorial.

@DuckTapeAl Maybe not testing then, but at least bugfixing on that platform. From the quality-of-code angle, that's worthwhile.

user61230

Ah, the sweet scent of cynicism on a fine Friday afternoon.

Grubermensch

.... written for version 0.8

SevenSidedDie

@Emrakul I like many things that the GNU project has done, but their documentation format is not one of them. :)

Grubermensch

@Emrakul Oh, don't worry, I'm like this all the time about the open-source community.

user61230

11:06 PM

Hear, hear.

DuckTapeAl

I really hope that Valve succeeds in their "make game companies use linux" campaign.

Hmm. Is there a way to do a site search through the Wayback Machine? I'm trying to find mentions of the sorcerer on Monte Cook's blog, but I don't know how to do a search there, so I've just been combing through likely blog entries.

SevenSidedDie

@DuckTapeAl Not that I know of. They index by URL, I don't think they also index the text.

DuckTapeAl

grump grump

SevenSidedDie

@DuckTapeAl But I'd be surprised if he wrote about it there. That stuff is mostly after the fact blog posts, I believe. Anything about the design decisions about sorcerers is likely to be found on the developer diaries and previews on Wizards.com.

Or Gleemax, egads.

DuckTapeAl

Yeah. I'm looking through old wizards blog posts circa 2000-2005 right now.

SevenSidedDie

11:18 PM

@DuckTapeAl Maybe go earlier. The hype was in 1998 and 1999, with the release in 2000. If I recall correctly.

Metool

11:29 PM

I got to link my player to Making the Tough Decisions, at least.

BESW

@Metool Yey!

Metool