TRPG General Chat

kviiri

00:21

Any pointers/common pitfalls if I want to try running a game focused on mild intra-party conflict? ("You're all on the same mission, but each one of you may have a hidden agenda that's similar but not identical to the overt assignment")

The players would spend most of the time shooting at someone else than each other, but I'd like to maintain a bit of paranoia in there to make them question each others' motives.

Bradd Szonye

I’ve done that a couple times. And it’s an inherent part of some games like Paranoia.

Sometimes Apocalypse World too.

kviiri

I was planning to use AW mechanics. They're my favorites for many things!

Bradd Szonye

I think the main pitfall is getting bogged down in the PvP play.

I still haven’t had a chance to play AW, but I’ve read it cover to cover.

kviiri

By what I've understood, Paranoia is PvP. I'm thinking more like... PvP as a seasoning.

Bradd Szonye

I have the seeds for something like that in my new D&D game. I borrowed the Factions idea from Adventurer’s League and the basic rules appendix.

Paranoia falls somewhere between rivalry and outright PvP.

The overall mission, and the need for plausible deniability, tends to rein in too much overt PvP

Because if you can’t cooperate enough to succeed, the whole group will likely be summarily executed.

kviiri

00:30

Like, the players don't know if there's going to be PvP. They know someone's lying, but not about what and not how much. The hidden assignments could be something that don't hinder the others at all, while the worst I think I'd make them would be "make sure Agent Z doesn't complete their hidden assignment"

Nothing that directly encourages them to shoot in each others' faces, at least!

Bradd Szonye

That sounds more like the D&D game I played that slowly evolved into an evil campaign, where everyone was superficially on the same team, but we got way too bogged down in intrigue to get anything accomplished.

BESW

For this kind of PvP, one of the best things to do is place strict boundaries on the nature of the conflict.

Bradd Szonye

The DM actually wasn’t stirring the plot – the intrigue was entirely player driven. We provided our own motivation.

Metool

Good evening!

BESW

@Metool Hi!

Since they're all working for the same boss (as well as possibly other bosses) you can say "the group objective comes first" or "you can't let anyone else know your secondary mission."

kviiri

00:33

One example: Alpha, Bravo and Charlie have been assigned to retrieve a sensitive document that's accidentally landed in the hands of an art dealer. Charlie receives a sealed envelope that says something like "By the way, it wasn't a mistake. The art dealer's working with KGB. Make sure he dies."

Bradd Szonye

@BESW Yeah, that’s how Paranoia works, more or less.

BESW

By forcing them all to keep their secondary missions secret, that eliminates outright combat.

kviiri

In that example, the hidden objective isn't necessarily in conflict with the main objective - killing the art dealer could be a smart move in any case.

Bradd Szonye

Keeping emphasis on the overall mission is probably a key point. But keeping the PCs from teaming up and forming factions and plotting against each other probably also helps.

kviiri

Yeah, revealing one's hidden objective is a CLASS A VIOLATION of PROTOCOL Z.

However, perhaps at least occasionally they should be bigger, because if they're always "minor details" players will be less inclined to care about other players' objectives.

Bradd Szonye

00:40

Keep them minor, but make some of them conflict?

BESW

You don't have to make them bigger, just more important to the other PCs by making them matter.

Bradd Szonye

Not at first, though. At first, make them minor but give some small boons so that the players get to like them.

BESW

If one's secondary objective makes things harder on the team, that's fun.

Bradd Szonye

Boons can be mechanical rewards, or just “that was cool, man.” Depends on the player.

@BESW Yeah, that too.

BESW

Or, as Bradd said, make them conflict. "Destroy the file" and "Retrieve the file," but both without anyone knowing you had any interest in the file.

Bradd Szonye

00:42

For my Roman Renaissance D&D campaign, I’ve stolen the Adventure League factions idea but customized them for the setting instead of Forgotten Realms. There are five factions, and my five players all happened to choose different ones.

kviiri

I can picture that devolving into a long argument on whether they should take or keep the file until one side calls "HA! Hidden objective!" and guns start blazing.

Then again... why not?

Bradd Szonye

The whole thing is very nebulous so far, although last session I told most of the players that they got a “faction point” for the way they handled the first episode.

I have no idea what that even means yet, but hopefully it gets them invested in the factions and thinking about what that might mean to them.

Later on, I can spring the secret missions idea.

And potentially have them conflict.

I still need to develop the factions a bit. So far, I just know their PR façades.

kviiri

Renaissance is cool. How historical is your setting?

Bradd Szonye

I’ve always done thinly-veiled Europe, and my last few settings have been outright what-if-style alternate fantasy histories.

For this one, the central conceit is that Constantine didn’t champion Christianity, so the Empire never abandoned traditional Roman religion, so they had the gods’ favor against the Germans.

kviiri

I like not-so-thinly-veiled too, although things occasionally take a turn for the fantastic. Somewhat like Assassin's Creed, except no aliens.

@BraddSzonye So Rome never fell?

Bradd Szonye

00:49

I’m taking the “pebble in the river of time” approach, so that even as big a change as that ultimately only causes ripples in history. But Rome never entirely fell, and continued more than just in name through the Eastern Empire, Charlemagne, and the Holy Roman Empire.

There were still dark ages, but they were caused by internal strife rather than being sacked by barbarians.

So it ends up being much like 15th Century Europe, but with magic and elves and more gods.

Christianity does exist, but it’s a minority faith, basically one of the many Roman mystery cults.

Tolerated about the same as Judaism, once initial persecution died down.

kviiri

I have an alt-history setting where the Normans fail to take Sicily from the Muslims. The Eastern Roman Emperor seizes the island using overwhelming force, also occupying large areas of the historical Kingdom of Sicily, and proceeds to retake Rome and Lombardy as a crusade against Catholics.

Bradd Szonye

The factions are: the Philosophers’ Society (Indiana Joneses and wannabes), the Fair Folk (sapient nonhumans and allies), the Hanseatic League (historical league of merchants dominant in Northern Europe), the Teutonic Knights (historical knightly order of crusaders who made a major land grab around Poland and the Baltic), and the Cult of Proserpina (mystery cult devoted to worship of Persephone).

kviiri

Eventually the French king converts to Orthodox Christianity as a political ploy, and Catholics are left without a leader as the old Pope is executed for his "crimes" (mostly political & religious reasons as you can guess).

BESW

Hmm. I haven't done much with alt history. Mostly I borrow mix-and-match for fantasy stuff.

Bradd Szonye

Each player went for a different faction. The good elf druid scholar went Philosophers, the neutral elf assassin outlander went Fair Folk, the good dragonborn paladin noble went Hanseatic, the neutral dragonborn warlock clansman/misfit went Knights, and the evil dwarf cleric soldier went Proserpina.

And everyone’s Chaotic.

kviiri

00:59

I like knightly orders in RPGs, so I'd probably pick the Teutonic Order. Hansa as close second.

Bradd Szonye

So far I’ve decided that the factions all have a PR façade, inner-circle goals, and some kind of secret.

For example, the Cult of Proserpina on the surface is a typical Roman mystery cult (basically, something like Christianity where living a virtuous life leads to reward in the afterlife, where “virtuous” depends on the details of the faith)

kviiri

I wonder if the actual Catholic church has an emergency guideline for cases where most of the ruling elite of the church gets beheaded in a short amount of time. How will you elect a Pope if all the Cardinals are either dead or exiled?

BESW

The catfolk tribes with a religion that merges Catholic original sin with Hindu reincarnation and the Australian aboriginal concept of time; the dragonborn nation which combines citystate confederacy with early Islamic social and military laws...

Bradd Szonye

And Proserpina/Persephone is a popular goddess of death and rebirth and spring, so she’s a great candidate for a mystery cult focus, with some fertility and partying thrown in.

kviiri

I once role played Venice in Crusader Kings II with the agenda "destroy monarchy. Destroy feudalism. Subjugate all kings"

That sounds like something Hansa could try as well?

Bradd Szonye

01:04

But the Cult’s dark secret is that the cult is a pyramid scheme.

I haven’t actually done that much research on the Hanseatic League yet!

I know more about the Teutonic Knights.

Which in this setting are the Knights of Juno rather than the Knights of Mary.

kviiri

Hanseatic League was an organization of traders, like a massive trade guild. Some cities in it enjoyed some privileges in the Holy Roman Empire because the Hansa was fairly powerful back in its day. Perhaps furthering these privileges would be their agenda?

Bradd Szonye

Yeah.

kviiri

Making the Hanseatic league a free confederation of city states instead of just a guild under the Emperor's law.

Bradd Szonye

I set up the Hansa and the Knights to be the main political/earthly powers among the factions.

One’s economic, one’s military.

kviiri

Yep, makes sense.

In the aforementioned setting where Catholicism is being threatened by increased Eastern Christianity zeal, there's an army of mostly German knights who travel across the land, recruit Catholic peasants to fight for the cause, and search for the next Pope who, they believe, will be made known to them in some way.

Bradd Szonye

01:16

I’m thinking that the Hansa faction should probably be good guys to subvert stereotypes of evil greedy merchants.

Just like the Cult of Proserpina is really a death cult and not the rebirth cult you’d expect given the patron.

kviiri

Hey, at least when merchants are evil, they're more likely to be rational evil!

Bradd Szonye

I chose the Hansa as the thematic replacement for the Zhentarim faction in FR, but they’re not the moral replacement.

I seriously considered having an organized crime faction, but I didn’t want something so unambiguously criminal.

kviiri

That's why the few homebrew DnD adventures I ever mastered had Tiamat's priests as main villains: her focus on wealth and greed allows for a subtler kind of evil than stuff like "conquest" or "torture".

Bradd Szonye

Actually, Hansa might be a good one for championing individuals and the middle class and free states and such.

kviiri

Indeed. You could make them the freedom fighters of a world dominated by feudal monarchy.

Bradd Szonye

01:19

Which makes it a good fit for the chaotic paladin who’s the Hansa PC.

One of the factions needs to be secretly full of eldritch horror.

kviiri

If you want to include internal conflict, there could be differing opinions among Hansa merchants what's the best way to replace Feudal Monarchy in the future.

Bradd Szonye

That might be the Rebirth Cult. But the other options are fun too.

BESW

Oh, @kviiri: it's not quite the same as your conflict concept, but I once ran a long campaign where every few months we'd spend a few sessions playing agents of the bad guys and setting up some evil plot that our main PCs would have to dismantle later.

Bradd Szonye

I mean, it’s really tempting to make the Persephone Cultists really be Lovecraftian Cultists.

kviiri

@BESW Heh, that sounds fun and clever!

Bradd Szonye

01:20

Oh I’ve done something like that too.

I did a one-shot adventure where the PCs all played agents of the corrupt church that they had previously only seen from the outskirts. To show them just how rotten it really was.

It worked really, really well.

kviiri

Like, some Hansa influentials would like a strict social hierarchy based on meritocracy or Randian objectivism, while the more progressive ones could go for downright socialism.

Bradd Szonye

Heh, that makes sense.

If I were more into social commentary in my games, it would be an interesting way to explore a situation where the capitalists really are the little guys and the progressives.

Instead of just thinking they still are.

kviiri

Well, (depending on your definition of capitalist) that was actually the case in the Middle Ages.

Bradd Szonye

Right, exactly.

It was still the case until pretty recently, historically.

Until they won and became the new evil overlords!

kviiri

Also, how should society transform itself from feudal systems to the Hanseatic republic? Should the kings be subjugated and made to pay taxes, or thrown into jail and have their holdings reallocated to bureucrats ASAP?

Bradd Szonye

01:26

(I say that only partly tongue in cheek)

I’d imagine that most of them just want personal freedom to run their businesses, and they largely get it. Like historical burghers/bourgeois.

kviiri

If I recall correctly the idea that a wealthy commoner could command similar respect to a "proper gentleman" (a noble) began to propagate in England somewhere around 1500's.

Bradd Szonye

My campaign is set around AD 1450 (although this Roman Empire doesn’t use the Year of Our Lord)

I’m not sure whether I should use the year of the city or the year of Diocletian.

Or something else.

kviiri

In my "Venetian republic conquers the world!" CK game, I eventually wound up having large feudal kingdoms as vassals. That's something that could also happen to the Hansa... afraid to shake the current balance of power between the king and the lesser nobility, they just sit at the top and tax the existing system until the time is ripe for reforms.

Bradd Szonye

Yeah.

I suspect that they won’t get developed so much in my game though, as the Hansa PC is the player that doesn’t actually care that much about RPGs, heh.

She’s the “point me at the bad guys and I’ll kill them, and don’t kill my guy, dammit” sort of player.

Emphasis on the latter.

kviiri

I'm going to use the merchant republic in one of my RPGs... it's too good to skip

Bradd Szonye

01:33

Yeah. And there’s lots of good stuff to borrow from real life.

I’ve got a game tomorrow. I should probably do some prep work tonight to expand on some of my background details. Like, add one new detail or secret to everything in play.

But I am terrible at prep work.

kviiri

Me too. Or I wouldn't know, I'm too lazy to ever do it properly, even if I always intend to!

It's 3:36 AM here. I guess I should go to bed.

See ya!

BESW

ttfn

Shalvenay

01:59

so, what do you folks use for whipping up campaign maps?

keep in mind I'm working in an urban/modern fantasy campaign that's taking on an industrial subtheme so far -- so I will need elements like roads and railroad tracks that don't show up in your average campaign

BESW

Define the scope of these maps.

World, nation, city, neighbourhood, building, room?

And check out Fantastic Maps. It's got lots of great resources and tutorials that can be generalised to whatever tools you use.

Bradd Szonye

I have traditionally mostly used sketches on paper.

I used Campaign Cartographer for a while.

Pixie

Yeah, when I do mapping I usually just draw it.

BESW

Shall I pull out my three example maps again?

Pixie

But I normally don't need to cover railroads. P:

BESW

02:08

Pixie

So I fell asleep again... and had quite a nightmare. Normally I don't have anything I could describe as a nightmare, but I've been awake for about 15 minutes, and my heartrate still seems to be up. :I Wish I could capture this feeling in a bottle and inject it into games, haha.

BESW

^ Caesar III custom map builder with Photoshop frills.

Bradd Szonye

CC is kinda cool and fun to play with, and I made some neat poster maps, but overall it seemed less useful and more work than alternatives.

BESW

^ Map scanned from Dictionary of Imaginary Places and coloured/labelled with Photoshop.

Shalvenay

@BESW: there are a couple of town-scale maps and a couple of small-regional maps for now, we'll probably wind up using Google Maps for the large scale stuff :P as the campaign world is very close to RL terrain-wise

Bradd Szonye

02:11

Yeah, I’ve used Google Maps for modern-day stuff like supers.

BESW

Bradd Szonye

Google Maps is great for modern city maps.

Pixie

Wish I could help. I don't have experience creating a modern "look and feel," and I usually don't make maps that are detailed to a city level anyway.

Bradd Szonye

I probably have my CC maps around somewhere, but they’re not handy from this computer.

BESW

^ Hand-drawn with coloured pencils, built off a map of Dinotopia.

Shalvenay

02:13

yeah, I actually am going as far as checking the data I have access to through my job to get the interchange tie-in right for my fictitious shortline :P

BESW

But yeah, Fantastic Maps is probably gonna give you a lot to work with.

Pixie

Yeah, these tutorials look pretty good.

Tritium21

Character creation in less defined systems is...hard.

character creation in this system includes a step that is essentially "Come up with a wishlist of special abilities, the GM will approve/deny them, and assign a point cost - from there, spend x points to apply them to your character"

Shalvenay

I don't find I have too much trouble with whipping up chars in FATE

Pixie

I guess it just kind of depends on your mindset and where you like to start with the character. There are pros and cons to both less defined and more defined systems.

BESW

02:17

Fate chargen is quite well defined.

Bradd Szonye

@BESW I was just thinking that too.

It’s just that half of the chargen in Fate is in plain language rather than numbers.

BESW

Heck, even RFS and Cthulhu Dark have well-defined chargen. Minimalistic, but well defined.

However, "make stuff up" is not a well defined chargen system.

Miniman

At a school fête to watch my little sister perform, which I'm fine with. Sitting through a primary school choir, on the other hand...

Pixie

Yeah, I've definitely seen a lot more open than Fate. @Tritium21 What system are you using?

Tritium21

github.com/FortunesFavor/Kismet/blob/master/…

that - home brew

BESW

02:19

Of course, then there's deadEarth.

Tritium21

theres well defined portions... then theres the gear and traits

Pixie

@Tritium21 I was just thinking that about the traits. They suddenly get kinda technical without much explanation or many examples.

Shalvenay

aah

Tritium21

Yeah, we have not beta tested this yet

BESW

Running through some old chat logs for map stuff, and found this:

Jun 17 at 4:11, by BESW

I need an adult and a contour map.

Pixie

02:23

Whew. Heartrate has finally calmed down. That took some time. I guess waking up right before someone breaks your fingers will do that...

@BESW Hah.

Miniman

@Pixie Say what?

Bradd Szonye

Nightmare?

Pixie

@Miniman I fell asleep for a few hours again and had a pretty intense nightmare. I also caught on fire, but that was glossed over through ~dream logic~ for worse.

BESW

You're an RPG player. On Fire is a very common condition.

6

Miniman

@Pixie Interesting, I always feel really relaxed when I wake up after a dream.

Shalvenay

02:31

@BESW: maybe it's telling @Pixie to play some sort of mage with fire affinities...

(Efreeti bloodline Warlock from 3.5e comes to mind)

Pixie

I get chased a lot in dreams. I don't usually get caught.

@BESW Ahaha. One character I'd love to play in Pathfinder is an ifrit alchemist. She just likes to make things go boom.

Bradd Szonye

Just had an interesting thought in another chat room. I enjoy narrative-first play and I’m generally pretty good at it, even in games where you wouldn’t normally expect it, like D&D3. But the better I get to know a game, the more I fall back on rules constructs rather than narrative and creativity. So, system mastery is a stumbling block for me when it comes to narrative-first play.

Pixie

But yeah, I woke up just when I was pinned on the ground together with a criminal's bratty son (not just annoying but likely a budding sociopath) while two of her enemies held us down and threatened us with tortured interrogation. I wasn't actually involved, but I'd been mixed up with the criminal and her group. The plane we were on had been delayed (possibly by the fire?) and she knew her enemies were going to show up. We were trying to get away before they did.

Shalvenay

@Pixie: pipeline.corante.com/archives/2013/01/09/… -- I think your ifrit alchemist can go to town now ;)

Pixie

@Shalvenay Ehehe.

That's the short version, anyway. My dreams have ridiculous amounts of build up, which made it worse -- it was suspenseful the entire time. There was a building sense of fear and desperation as everything went wrong and I was in a situation where dangerous people who had seen me at least briefly with someone they hated were combing the city (which I was just visiting, so I didn't know it) for everyone involved with her.

Like, we were just about to get out of the airport when they showed up and saw us. :I

If only I can create that sense of dramatic timing down outside my sleep, I'll be happy. :v

Dorian

03:00

@Shalvenay that's a good bloodline, was thinking about taking it or another genie one for my one chara before I convinced the GM to allow a homebrew Major Air Elemental bloodline.

BESW

03:12

Going afk, ping me if I'm needed.

Bradd Szonye

@BESW Have fun!

Pixie

03:53

Oops, I just realized that bit about the ifrit alchemist was supposed to be @Shalvenay. I guess I clicked the wrong message? xD I'd still really like to play her someday. The last two PF games I've played, one was taking place on a pirate ship (blowing up other ships is all well and good but catching our own on fire would be bad :v), the other needed someone a bit more... calm. xD

OH yeah, and it started in Sandpoint, which has a bad history with fire. It would have been the worst possible time for her to start setting things on fire. xD

BESW

Evolution continues as pregnant women are now able to provide free Wi-Fi. http://t.co/Le29LP9ANI

Tweeted by DrScienceCat on November 13, 2014 at 5:02 PM

3

Pixie

08:15

I keep thinking about my half-elf alchemist Flainn's family. They never come up during play, which I'm cool with, but I like musing about Flainn's childhood and his parents' lives before he happened. Someday it would be cool to play one or both in something, in their adventuring past...

Zachiel

09:41

[also groans here]

Dorian

10:02

Zachiel

@Dorian leeched image banner

Dorian

Aah crap...

And it won't let me delete it either now because you quoted it (I think, could also be the time)

That's a drawfriend's rendition of my character for this evil PF game I'm joining :D

There's another one that's in color but it's unfinished.

Does SE have a leech banner thing too?

Zachiel

10:38

@Dorian It is the time

@Dorian I don't think so

Zachiel

11:11

Why , why, why don't people let me use magic gloves and magic spiked gauntlets at the same time? (There's this house rule to disallow multiple drawn magical weapons with no drawbacks)

The Oracle

11:29

0

Q: Are Non-Problem Based Questions Acceptable on the Main Site?

Recently I posted a question which was closed, if I understand correctly, because it was asked out of a desire to have a specific, narrow topic explained to me rather than asking out of a desire to have a specific, solvable problem which I am experiencing solved. This confused me because I have ...

Tashio

11:40

@zachiel Usually for the same reason you can't wear more than 2 magical rings 1 on each hand. Otherwise people would stack 20 rings on each hand trying to claim bonuses. It's just a balance thing.

Zachiel

@Tashio Yeah but I mean, the rules say the ring of poison, ring of venom, whichever his name, is a weapon. It must be worn, max one per hand, and does not occupy the ring slot. Now, I turn it into a +1 ring of poison, and it suddenly also eats up my ring slot? We're talking of a game where a buckler does not share the same slot with bracers, or armor spikes allow you to use an extra secondary weapon without getting your hands full

I would have understood "you can't get magic on your ring"

it's the offering me some new, cool and unintended options at the expenses of things I need that bugs me

like if there weren't enough rings already I wanted to wear

Tashio

12:00

@Zachiel Yea in that case it would be a case of it's a freebie ring slot. Ultimately that's DM choice of what they will or won't let stack. If they are open to combinations then should be open to other things stacking

Zachiel

12:24

@Tashio I don't know, all I got is the results and the result in this case is me not being able to have a weapon in my hand while climbing, doing acrobatics for the public (unless I limit myself to some kind of dances) or while hugging someone. Unless I decide to sacrifice 6 dex or hide in plain sight + darkvision or either +5 AC and heavy fortification or rolling initiative twice every time.

Brian Ballsun-Stanton

12:44

@Ruut Please do not answer in comments, especially on closed questions.

BESW

14:00

In the grand finale of our Doctor Who adventure, we tricked the Valeyard into trying to suck the regenerations out of an android disguised as the Doctor.

We then spent at least 8 Fate points to manipulate the resulting feedback from the Eye of Harmony so it knocked out the Valeyard but didn't knock out the android.

It was beautiful, and the final Fate point was spent on the Valeyard's No second chances aspect, which I'd created to indicate that he didn't give enemies second chances and he had no regenerations--but was interpreted mid-play to also mean that having tried to suck out the Doctor's regenerations with the Eye of Harmony once, he was doomed to fail the second time.

Also--we talked about our upcoming ARRPG campaign, and we're revising the context: it's going to be an Atomic Robo/Hellboy/X-Files/Warehouse 13 mashup universe, and we're agents of a mercenary organisation that gets hired to handle Weird Stuff (both science and magic).

Our base is a castle in Oregon repurposed as offices and warehouse space, and our cover story is that we're accountants and stock managers for a Japanese office supply corporation.

Zachiel

Oregon has castles?

BESW

There are castles all over the USA: in the 1800s and early-to-mid 1900s, building your own castle was a surprisingly popular fad for wealthy Americans.

My idea for this one is that it got started in the 1800s, abandoned and then restarted several times over many decades with different styles, then got some modern bits and upgrades over the 1900s. It's a patchwork mishmash of styles, eras, and building codes.

kviiri

I like weird patchwork buildings.

BESW

It's probably got some ghosts and secret passages, and a few cheap horror movies were filmed in it in the 50s and 60s.

kviiri

Sutyagin House

The Sutyagin House was a wooden house in Arkhangelsk, Russia. The 13-story, 144-foot-tall (44 m) residence of the local entrepreneur Nikolai Petrovich Sutyagin was reported to be the world's, or at least Russia's, tallest wooden house. Constructed by Mr. Sutyagin and his family over 15 years (starting in 1992), without formal plans or a building permit, the structure deteriorated while Mr. Sutyagin spent a number of years in prison for racketeering. In 2008, it was condemned by the city as a fire hazard, and the courts ordered it to be fully demolished by February 1, 2009. On December 26, 2008...

BESW

14:16

There's a castle in a swamp near my college in South Carolina, and one of my friends went to a university in New York State where a professor started to build a castle as a home near the campus. He ran out of money and now it's the school library.

kviiri

The coastal fortress complex in front of my hometown is in very good condition, and is nowadays a popular picnic site in the Summertime.

The guns are still there, but full of garbage.

BESW

Oh, yeah, there are tons of fortresses around too, in addition to private castles.

(I went to college a couple hours away from the fortress which fired the first shots of the American Civil War.)

Metool

Hallo.

kviiri

Also, near my childhood home, there are a lot of concrete "trenches", intended for civilian use if there was an air raid. We used to play in those as kids.

BESW

@Metool [wave]

Zachiel

14:28

@Metool hi

BESW

Setting design sheet for our upcoming campaign.

Metool

14:53

> Each adventurer will typically have nine spaces adjacent to it, meaning a total of 36 creatures can attack the party at once in melee.

Some people cannot count.

(Assuming square grids, of course.)

BESW

...how big are these creatures?

Because counting aside...

Metool

Medium humanoid (boggard).

BESW

I'm reasonably sure I can fit 100 grigs into the spaces adjacent to a human, even assuming the human only occupies 5 feet vertically.

If we assume they're medium non-flyers.... that's 24 squares if we give the outside guys pikes.

But let's see.... assume a party of four bunches together back-to-back...

kviiri

If you assume a normal grid of squares and both diagonal and orthogonal adjacency, but not one thing per tile, a character would have nine adjacent tiles: their own and the eight surrounding ones.

BESW

The "one thing per tile" rule varies in D&D-likes depending on if the things are friend or foe.

So I can stuff four grigs into a square, but only if they're buddies--otherwise they start getting attacks of opportunity and such.

kviiri

15:03

Yeah. I've come to understand that even with "one thing per tile" some people disagree on whether a thing is adjacent to itself - personally I don't think it makes sense that I'm adjacent to myself unless it's explicitly defined so. However, if there are multiple things in a tile, I think it's intuitive to consider other things in the same tile to be adjacent to me.

BESW

My math says 32 boggards if four PCs are bunched up into a 2x2 square.

(Assuming reach weapons.)

Assuming they're statted as given, though, that's 4x4-4 = 12.

Zachiel

@BESW weren't boggards those that could stack 3 per tile on top of each other?

BESW

Pretty sure not?

Zachiel

@BESW I think the 4 in the corners can't reach, nearest PC is 15' away (assuming it's 3.x)

BESW

Possibly. It's been a while.

Zachiel

15:10

I'm pretty sure PF has a rule for reach that's different than the rule for moving, and 4e obviously isn't an issue.

@BESW Right, those were gibberlings

kviiri

I recall playing a computer RPG with ASCII maps where you could see further in West or East than you could North or South, simply because typical displays have characters taller than they're wide.

So the overall effect looks somewhat circular but is actually quite asymmetric.

BESW

Heh.

Taxicab distances.

Trying to interpret taxicab distance literally makes physics cry.

3

kviiri

A lot of things would.

Metool

[raises eyebrow]

kviiri

The "let's make vision better in certain directions so it looks prettier" is a design choice I haven't seen since, anywhere.

BESW

15:22

In 4e, for example: distance inside a square obeys normal measurements. But as soon as it goes from one square to another, the nature of distance and measurement changes.

By rights, light should be bending in bizarre ways, creatures larger than a single square should be driven mad or ripped apart.

Light travels at different speeds depending on what angle it's travelling at compared to an imperceivable (in-universe) reference point.

But because measurement works "normally" within squares, but not between them, that means... I'm not even sure what.

The whole thing may be quite normal for denizens of this world, but translating it into ours--circles are squares, squares are circles, don't think about triangles.

kviiri

Does 4e actually use taxicab distance anywhere, or is it "squares are circles" all the way?

BESW

15:39

Technically I think it's Chebyshev distance.

kviiri

Yeah, in taxicab a diagonally adjacent square would be twice as far as an orthogonally adjacent one.

I like hex far more than square tiling for tactical gameplay, but unfortunately a lot of good stuff I'd want to portray isn't hexagon-friendly.

For example, we're strangely fond of rectangular houses, you need to do some fitting work to make them look not-very-stupid in a hex grid.

Zachiel

even bee-hive houses would have problems. Half the cell walls would cut a hex in two

kviiri

The trouble that presents of course depends on the scale. For large scale mecha combat or an overworld map, most rectangular structures are small enough to fit inside a single hex.

Shalvenay

17:33

@BESW: oh gosh

Tritium21

better battle grid

You can butt that against 2 walls, and have minimal lost space along the other 2

Grubermensch

17:50

Tritium21

the DM screen is backwards

Grubermensch

Yeah [sigh]

Tritium21

18:04

can you unaccept an answer, and return the question to a state of having no accepted answers?

kviiri

18:34

@Tritium21 That doesn't seem very appealing to me.

wax eagle

19:16

@Tritium21 yes

Tritium21

@waxeagle Good, cause That is what i advised someone to do >.>

wax eagle

@Tritium21 yeah, accepts are one type of vote that is always rescindable

BESW

22:58

Watch Atomic Robo RPG being played LIVE right now! GMed by @devlin1! Sweet! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUunjvXQXX0

Tweeted by FateCorps on November 15, 2014 at 8:39 PM

Pixie

23:18

Spent my precious day off cleaning... [collapses] Now I'm going to try working on Dorian's symbol. I didn't lose my SAI license, if I can just remember how to use it... but I'm also tempted to buy Clip Studio Paint Pro.

If I remember correctly, Illuststudio's functions are present in Clip Studio. I demoed Illuststudio, and it was great, but you pretty much can't buy it without importing a physical copy from Japan (expensive) or renting time through the Japanese site (annoying). Clip Studio, on the other hand, is readily available for $50.

Tritium21

TIL my town is named after the man who gave indians the smallpox blankets

Shalvenay

yuck :/

Tritium21

Mine is not the only one. there are hundreds of counties, towns, villages, streets, parks, and forts named after him

in both canada and the us

doppelgreener

23:44

@Tritium21 ... are these blankets that were laden with smallpox?

Pixie

There is some back-and-forth on whether that actually happened amongst historians, but there's a pretty good case for it, at least -- he suggested it. Whatever the case, yeah, it's unfortunate (and that's putting it mildly) that so many things are named after him. He was considered a hero at the time.

BESW

Siege of Fort Pitt

For the 1885 action in the Canadian North-West Rebellion, see the Battle of Fort Pitt The Siege of Fort Pitt took place in 1763 in what is now the city of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. The siege was a part of Pontiac's Rebellion, an effort by American Indians to drive the British out of the Ohio Country and back across the Appalachian Mountains. The Indian effort to capture Fort Pitt ultimately failed. This event is best known for the documented use of biological warfare when the British Army at Fort Pitt attempted to infect the besieging Native Americans with smallpox using blankets...

Pixie

There's a little more information on the debate on Jeffery Amerst's article (this one seems to attempt to introduce it but isn't very well arranged or cited). en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffery_Amherst,_1st_Baron_Amherst

Regardless, it's pretty clear that the tactic was known and suggested by Amherst, whether or not it was implemented (and how effective it was). His comment alone is enough to illustrate exactly what kind of person he was.

doppelgreener

@Pixie the "execrable race" one in particular

Pixie

@doppelgreener Yeah, that's the one I was referring to.

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