TRPG General Chat

doppelgreener

10:17

@BESW That actually sounds appropriate

From what little I know about Mouse Guard, it's about being the rare and exceptional very few who struggle to their utmost just to stay alive for the sake of everyone else also staying alive.

overwhelmed in the pursuit of averting disaster is perfect

Tritium21

I am making this a question on main

0

Q: What is a good system for a political espionage game?

I want to run a political game, focused on intelligence and counter-intelligence. The PC's would be analysts, trying to influence their own leaders to take action (or not to take action as the case may be), in an effort to avert war, or protect their nation. I am not looking for a game system t...

You might as well get points for your recommendations.

BESW

I've never played any Mouse Guard, so I can't suggest such a radial hack to it and expect the answer to stay up.

And since Mouse Guard isn't about intelligence gathering, it'd be a radical hack.

doppelgreener

AlexP might. He knows stuff about Mouse Guard and Burning Wheel.

BESW

I mean, Realm Guard was just a re-skin.

doppelgreener

@AlexP ^ See above!

Tritium21

10:28

This is why I like communities. You might not know the answer, but you know someone who would.

Interesting, system-for-setting has only been used 4 times, and 3 of those times it has been paired with game-recommendations

BESW

I should probably add it to one of my questions!

And it needs a wiki.

Tritium21

it does.

The usage so far seams to indicate its for "settings for which no game system is known to exist"

except for one pathfinder question

BESW

Done.

> For questions about what mechanical system is the best match for games in a particular setting.

Someone else can flesh it out if they want.

Mourdos

@BESW bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29616197

BESW

Aaaand added to my own question.

Mourdos

10:39

@BESW Not just the generic "sexual video games", but the irony of it focusing on the female 'victims' and then using GamerGate as an alternate viewpoint. The article it references for gamergate actually talks about the cause. Yet the BBC have failed to actually realise what the issue is. They should have run it as a media corruption story, but they ran it as a story that is all about what gamergate is trying to stop.

Tritium21

@BESW That is a rough question!

BESW

@Mourdos It's definitely "We're confused about what's going on and interviewed a lot of people who seem to know better than we do."

But the whole debacle is seriously confusing with its subjects and topics shifting like sand in the winds of the social media desert.

Mourdos

@BESW Except that the people they interviewed are the ones who have been abusing media. I don't agree with what was done to those in the article, but I don't think they deserve publicity.

Yep.

Tritium21

@BESW I actually want to say look at The Dresden Files game, stripping out the setting, of course. It provides mechanics for fleshing out the setting and playing in it. I cannot make it a solid recommendation as I have not actually played the game, and am unfamiliar with the source material.

BESW

@Mourdos It's not a topic I've been staying on top of enough to speak about knowledgeably, and it's probably too hot-topic for this chat anyway. [shrug]

Tritium21

10:44

(I tune out when gamergate comes up)

BESW

I'm not sure Fate is really built to accommodate themes of the Metropolis Suite, but it could work.

A "use Fate!" answer should probably give recommendations on how to turn its dials.

→ 4 messages moved to Not a bar, but plays one on TV

→ 1 message moved to Not a bar, but plays one on TV

Tritium21

thank you

BESW

10:59

@Tritium21 I've added some bullet points to my question.

Tritium21

@BESW How do you feel about nWoD? rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/87936/Mirrors-Bleeding-Edge

That particular book is a compendium of rules hacks to make cyberpunky things in nWoD 1.0 (should work fine in GMC). rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/82477/… show how to make the actual hacks. The GMC update core rule book has social combat rules to handle political intrigue. But the entire point is moot if you dont like the base system

BESW

I've played a single session of a White Wolf game. It was Mage, I think it was oWoD. And the ST was awful.

Tritium21

That does sour ones appreciation of a game system ...

BESW

Yes.

It drove me back to D&D-only for at least five years.

Tritium21

I can say, for one, the system supports non-combat focused games. I have been running for 3 or so months, twice a week, a VTM game, and we have rolled init twice, and one of those times the first combat action was to talk their way out of combat

BESW

11:31

@Tritium21 How is it on tone?

Tritium21

It tends to be toned towards personal drama in the face of oppression and and a grim world

0

A: I want to run an RPG inspired by Monáe's 'Metropolis' concept series

This may be an imperfect answer. You may want to consider New World of Darkness, with the Mirrors system hacking supplement for cyberpunk. On a point for point explanation: You are desiring a system that focuses, not on combat, but politics and social intrigue. This has been the core selling...

@BESW For the record, until you posted your bullet points, I was leaning heavily towards recommending shadowrun

BESW

@Tritium21 If you haven't seen the music videos I link in the question yet, do! They may help understand the world, and they're awesome anyway.

Tritium21

@BESW I will take a look, but... right now is not a great time to be putting on music (its early morning here)

BESW

Ah.

(Her music video for Cold War is also quite great, but as the entire thing is just a head-and-shoulders view of Monáe, it's not very helpful in defining the world.)

Tritium21

11:47

So this may be telling in my taste in music... If i were to post the music videos for the music i like, and ask for a game system to support the worlds they are building... half of it would get answers of "Thats just D&D dude" and the other half would get me banned from the site!

D&D or Scion

BESW

11:58

My tastes are... wide and ranging.

In RPG terms, I like stuff from WoD: Changeling to Ars Magica to Atomic Robo to... I have no idea what RPG Lupe Fiasco is.

kviiri

Hello everyone!

Tritium21

which changeling? there were two, with very different feelings

BESW

I don't know them well enough to differentiate. I'm just thinking "wild British isles magic stories where you can't trust anyone and everything ends in tragedy."

lisardggY

'morning.

Aaron

Good mornin all

Tritium21

12:08

@BESW Was the character essentially a rape victim before the start of the game?

BESW

...often yes.

Tritium21

Changeling: the Lost

BESW

I'm thinking particularly of Loreena McKennitt, who's best known for covering or re-interpreting old British Isles folk songs like "The Bonny Swans."

Tritium21

[nod]

lisardggY

I wonder what system matches Muse's music.

Something space-opera and overblown.

Traveller is too nitty-gritty. Maybe Fading Suns.

Tritium21

12:13

Exalted + hacked to bits for spacey stuff?

lisardggY

Possibly.

Mourdos

I need to play exalted again.

Tritium21

or... maybe a star wars game

lisardggY

Exalted came along right as I was getting very tired of the larger than life characters. Vampire and In Nomine and all the supernatural-characters-in-a-natural-world type games, so I never got into it.

BESW

Diaspora?

Tritium21

12:16

So at what point are you supposed to follow the Gygaxian path and write your own game?

BESW

@Tritium21 I'm actually doing that! Slowly.

Mourdos

@lisardggY I tried playing fading suns, we found that we just failed at our rolls with all too much frequency

I'm convinced we were doing something wrong

lisardggY

@Mourdos I had a guy at my table sit with the rules, get annoyed, and build a table-based system (d20 and check the result) that was much easier to use than the existing mechanic.

Streamlined everything.

Mourdos

I mean, I like the idea of roll d20 < stat + skill to succeed

It felt very GURPSy to me

Tritium21

My friend hacked together a fate derivative that is that rolling mechanic

BESW

12:21

There's a franchise for which I have a very specific set of system criteria which don't seem to be met by any existing system.

kviiri

12:38

I've been spending the morning watching (or listening) to Digimon Adventure.

Tritium21

12:52

Well that was an interesting keyboard shortcut fail

anyways, people are waking up, so its time for me to sleep

nini

Aaron

Night

kviiri

It's funny how stuff changes between dubbed versions...

Mourdos

Yeah.

kviiri

The Finnish dubbing company (infamously poor both in acting and translation) makes some errors that are obviously mistranslated from English, but some scenes cut in the English version are retained. Also, all the Digimon have their Japanese names.

The Oracle

0

Q: system-for-setting scope and difference from game-rec

While reading What is a good system for a political espionage game?, I saw the system-for-setting tag, and I don't see the difference to a tightly formulated (i.e. correctly asked) game-recommendation question. It is currently used 5 times in total, 4 of which are also tagged game-recommendation...

discussion tags

Aaron

12:57

So I need heavy armor but don't want to dip in a class that has it or burn a feat slot for it. Is there any other way to get heavy armor proficiency in pathfinder?

Mourdos

You mean, magic items or powers that grant it?

Aaron

I would like to have it as early as possible so it depends on the price but yea those would work.

Mourdos

I can't recall any. There are guidelines somewhere on that grant items as feats in 3.5

Probably Tome of Battle?

Aaron

Hmm. I'll look. Thanks

Mourdos

> Bastion Press's Arms and Armor Revised(3.5) has Weightless.
Weightless: Armor given this enchantment has
no weight at all. Weightless armor removes any ad-
justment for speed from a given armor type and re-
duces the arcane spell failure percentage chance by
10%. It also decreases the Armor Check penalty by 2
and increases the Max Dex adjustment by 2.
Caster Level: 7th; Prerequisites: Craft Magic Arms
& Armor, levitate; Market Price: +1 bonus for light or
medium armor and +2 bonus for heavy armor

Mithril: -3 (9k)
Weightless: -2 (+2 enchant)
Nimbleness: -1 (+1 enchant)
Armor Expert: -1 (trait)

You only need to ignore 5 for Hellplate, or 6 for full plate

I would recommend Nimbleness Mithril Hellplate w/ Armor expert trait

and then not bother with armor prof

Aaron

13:07

That would remove all penalties?

Mourdos

Hellplate is ACP 5, Full plate is 6

Mithril is PF, Weightless is 3.5, Nimbleness is 3.0, Armor Expert is PF

Weightless is pretty boss.

Aaron

Yea. Hmm. I might use this approach but I am going to see if there is anyway I can get it to act like medium armor first. I remember seeing a set of medium armor that was treated as light armor so gonna check to see if the same can be done to heavy

Mourdos

Mithril specifically says it doesn't chance the category for proficiency, and Fusing only applies for movement.

Aaron

Ok. Maybe it was 3.5 I was thinking of.

BESW

14:19

[Takes notes for ARRPG]

That_Knight_Guy

@BESW whistles that looks nice

Joshua Aslan Smith

yo

Aaron

14:36

@BESW I really hope that works

wax eagle

@Grubermensch yes. 915 tomorrow night, sorry about confuzzlement last week.

Joshua Aslan Smith

@besw hmm new energy economies

Aaron

If this worked it would also benefit the Mars mission as well.

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith yeah, lots of potential there. Still have to prove it works, sell it to someone, and scale it. Also overcome existing infrastructure problem (IE a huge amount of existing infrastructure is devoted to petrol)

Aaron

Has anyone here thought about trying to sign up for the mars mission?

Joshua Aslan Smith

14:41

Right, I mean a lot of this is issues with legislation at the state and national level

We should have tons of nuclear plants right now

obviously fusion could dramatically change that if it is as viable and scalable as they say

wax eagle

@JoshuaAslanSmith yeah, but building nukes is serious PITA and super expensive.

google Watts Barre

Joshua Aslan Smith

it doesnt help that we went with the more wasteful type 50-60 years ago

vs breeders

Metool

15:05

Morning.

Joshua Aslan Smith

morning

Joshua Aslan Smith

15:44

hmmm I feel like the latest dungeon world question could be simply answered with, dont have PVP

dont think that would go over well

That_Knight_Guy

Probably not.

Metool

16:34

Unrelated...

Baby was not baby, baby was bees.

Phil

17:55

Hmmm, newish user has just rolled back an edit I did on their answer where I removed the first sentence which apologised for the lateness of the answer. What's the best way to respond to that?

wax eagle

@Phil Leave a comment helping them understand that answers are welcome at any stage in a question's life and there is no need to apologize. We want answers where all of the content is relevant for as long as possible.

Phil

scrub that - looks like it was an issue with us both editing at the same time

wax eagle

ah, that does happen

lisardggY

18:30

Hmm. Can anyone recommend a good, simple Pathfinder character sheet I can use?

Also, does anyone have any good ideas for a minor magic item that would be interesting for a 3rd level knife-master rogue? I have a pretty free hand, but just taking a +1 dagger would be boring.

That_Knight_Guy

19:08

@lisardggY Belt of Incredible Dexterity might be a good choice. Especially if you took Agile Maneuvers and/or Weapon Finesse as feats.

lisardggY

Something that just boosts an ability score or gives me an attack bonus is kinda boring.

This is a one-shot character, I don't really care about optimization or long-term viability. :)

That_Knight_Guy

19:29

Sheath of Bladestealth from the APG? Your dagger and it's sheath are invisible. A pat-down or anything that counters invisibility is needed to detect the weapon.

And you get a bonus to 'hide' the weapon while sheathing it.

lisardggY

Hmm. That's pretty cool. Fits in with the character.

Thanks.

MadMAxJr

21:34

Perhaps my players would be better off in a game where they are angry wasps and are totally justified in arbitrarily attacking every meaty thing that passes by. World of Darkness? No, World of SO MANY BUGS.

Phil

frustrated?

MadMAxJr

Not terribly so, just griping a bit about recent player behavior.

That and I'd like to see 'Wasp: The Horrible Pain' next to WoD books.

Phil

:)

BESW

I feel the hellwasp swarm is an ideal tool for that effect.

Someday when I'm absolutely sure one of my players won't be attending, I'm going to do something with hellwasps in a non-D&D context.

MadMAxJr

My players had a couple encounters in the last few sessions that didn't start off hostile, but they opted to just make it hostile very quickly. Doesn't ruin my game flow or pacing, I was just hoping for a chance at social conflict instead of martial conflict.

Basically it's turned into, "Hey Paladin, just how big is this guy on the evil scanner?" "Pretty darn evil." "Okay, weapons up...."

trogdor

21:38

@BESW what the heck is a hellwasp ?

BESW

> A single hellwasp resembles a thumb-sized normal wasp, except its carapace is gleaming black with ruby-red stripes, and its compound eyes are an iridescent green. In swarms, hellwasps form a collective hive mind intelligence with infernal cunning and bloodlust.

trogdor

lol

MadMAxJr

Oh. Lovely. 'We are wasp'

BESW

> A hellwasp swarm can enter the body of a helpless or dead creature by crawling into its mouth and other orifices. [...] The swarm can abandon the body at any time, although doing this takes 1 full round. Any attack against the host deals half damage to the hellwasp swarm as well, although the swarm’s resistances and immunities may negate some or all of this damage.
If a hellwasp swarm inhabits a dead body, it can restore animation to the creature and control its movements, effectively transforming it into a zombie of the appropriate size for as long as the swarm remains inside. If a hellw…

(source)

MadMAxJr

.. Wasps that can puppet corpses. Oookay. Bug bombing everything.

BESW

21:43

It turns enemies into terrible, horrific, nightmare-inducing living piñatas.

Similar concepts include the necrotic cyst line of spells (which give a creature sentient cancer that can mind control them, and bursts out and attacks when they die) and the intellect devourer (which eats your brain then curls up inside your skull to take its place).

MadMAxJr

And D&D adventurers can't expect to find a 12ga cartridge packed with sand to rip their wings off.

trogdor

just plain charming

MadMAxJr

22:00

Well, I'm off to my car, where I will be constantly on watch for flesh eating, parasitic, body dominating, hive mind wasps.

BESW

Have fun!

mxyzplk

22:17

Coming into the home stretch on the Feng Shui 2 Kickstarter - it's made so many stretch goals that it's ridiculous! kickstarter.com/projects/atlasgames/…

2

BESW

@mxyzplk Work the Kickstarter link into this line and I'll pin it.

mxyzplk

22:42

@BESW kk done

BESW

Sweet!

mxyzplk

thanks

I want ALL THE STRETCH GOALS

BESW

If I didn't have to negotiate with my bank every time I want to give Kickstarter money, I'd be more inclined to drop $10 on it. But I don't think it's a great fit for my current group, so it'd be a speculative purchase.

mxyzplk

22:55

I play FS once with each new group I join to make them suck less

BESW

What qualities of FS encourage this transformation?

mxyzplk

Causes people to loosen up and take some narrative responsibility - but it's not as big a shift as like a full on indie game. If someone plays D&D and then Fiasco and then goes back to D&D they still play D&D the same way. If someone plays D&D and then plays Feng Shui and goes back to D&D they are better improvisers (players and GM)

Also can help wean off maps/minis, can help players not always be seeking loot and level-ups, can help GMs not always quash players trying to be cool

BESW

Interesting.

Not problems I really see in my current group, though.

My college group, yes. But I was in the same boat then.

Our newest guy (also the youngest by a fair margin) is having trouble wrapping his head around "these games don't have levels," but that's because he's from a CRPG background; he's never played D&D.

trogdor

Computer RPG?

BESW

Aye.

trogdor

23:04

mk

thought so

I have played some of those, I can't say most of the ones I have played are impressive anymore

they were at the time, but looking back,.... they all did the same thing

well not entirely, but a lot of them did

the ones I mean being, "look we don't care about the story, just hack and slash some monsters till you get sick of it"

and RPG can be a very flexible term

I have played some amazing games that could in some way be called an RPG, whether or not the term is literally accurate.

user1810077

Hi guys!

BESW

[wave]

user1810077

Anyone can help me with dnd 4ed question?

wax eagle

23:20

@user1810077 sure, what's up?

Miniman

@waxeagle Is it ok if I copy the Action Surge caveat?

user1810077

Oh, dude, u are always find answers for me =) So, I have a ritual"Enchant magic item". What kind of item rarity can i create? Can i use this ritual to make wondorous item?

Miniman

@waxeagle Never mind, I just realised it's wrong anyway

wax eagle

@Miniman of course

Miniman

Hmm, reconsidered again

wax eagle

23:30

@Miniman it's not wrong. I can find the Mearls quote if I needs to :)

@user1810077 lemmie look at the ritual. Gotta finish putting the kids to bed

Miniman

@waxeagle The rule says you can't cast other spells, except a cantrip [...]. The key point I'm in two minds about is whether that means 1 cantrip

user1810077

You touch a normal item and turn it into a magic item of
your level or lower. The ritual’s component cost is equal to
the price of the magic item you create.
You can also use this ritual to resize magic armor (for
example, shrink a fire giant’s magic armor to fit a halfling).
There is no component cost for this use.

Miniman

Or if it could equally be phrased as you can't cast other spells, except cantrips [...]

wax eagle

@user1810077 yeah, that's what I thought. Since it doesn't indicate, it would be DM discretion

user1810077

@waxeagle Ok thx

wax eagle

23:37

@user1810077 I would limit it to commons, or maybe common and uncommon (provided that's not abused). Rare would be right out

(or at least require components that made for a fun side quest)

@Miniman "you can't cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of 1 action." I can see that reading, though I'd argue the Action Surge breaks that general rule perhaps?

Miniman

@waxeagle I can see the argument either way, that's why I'm not sure

But as a GM I'd definitely let a player use their Action Surge to cast another cantrip

I mean, cantrips, so meh

Crazy question - do the badges for editing and answering care what order you edit and answer?

BESW

@waxeagle I believe it got errata'd that way.

Enchant magic item pre-dates item rarity mechanics.

BESW

23:56

A question for the Anydice brigade!

wax eagle

@BESW it managed to escape the grasp of errata

BESW

@waxeagle Oh, my.

Transcript for