TRPG General Chat

doppelgreener

00:06

@JoshuaAslanSmith i'm familiar with the civil war & racial history parts of it, and some other tidbits, but not stuff like this :)

sounds like a cool kind of job

Joshua Aslan Smith

@doppelgreener cannot for the life of me find a picture of me there

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Ready for a classic "no such thing as D&D" scenario?

Joshua Aslan Smith

@besw thats a really good summation

Customers historically and currently were bewildered by the ever expanding options

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth Me! I am!

Joshua Aslan Smith

and once prohibition hit a lot of bartenders moved over and were sought after as well

their expertise with customer interaction and recommendations in addition to their experience at not wasting materials (alcohol being a highly taxed and valuable commodity by volume) made them perfect hires

Lord_Gareth

00:10

@doppelgreener giantitp.com/forums/… <-Note that large amounts of Pathfinder are balanced around the ironclad rule that You Only Get One Swift Ever Ever Ever.

And that this is not new

Joshua Aslan Smith

The ice cream parlor was also more egalitarian than the bar was and ladies loved to go so a whole sub-type of soda jerks took the job simply as a way to meet, flirt with, and impress women

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener What makes this the "no such thing as D&D" moment is when he notes that this ruling is common in his experience, because of DMs coming from 4th and re-creating a familiar mechanic

Anaphory

What's a “No Such Thing As D&D” moment?

Lord_Gareth

SUMMON THE ARTICLE, MINIONS

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth Yeah... I was thinkin' of the same. Glad someone responded courteously to that.

Joshua Aslan Smith

00:19

@Anaphory "There's no such thing as D&D" is an aphorism that came in the wake of D&D next

Lord_Gareth

@JoshuaAslanSmith Came well before then, in @Magician's article

Joshua Aslan Smith

stating that even within a single edition there is no truly shared universal experience that could be aptly described

@Lord_Gareth sorry I should have said came to great prominence (here at least)

Magician

Oooh, ooh, I know this one!

No Such Thing as D&D

Anaphory

Ah, okay.

Lord_Gareth

In other news

Someone ran the numbers on my Crimson Countess archetype, and at level 20 she turns into slightly more than an Olympic swimming pool's worth of blood as a Swift action

Which can climb up sheer surfaces

Magician

00:31

@Lord_Gareth That's a lot of blood.

I assume the volume scales with level, but what is it used for?

Lord_Gareth

@Magician Turns out it's slightly short of the swimming pool. The numbers guy calculated it out to 74,133.331 liters of blood.

Adeptus

whaaat

Lord_Gareth

@Magician As a swift action the character turns into a (5 ft. x level) radius pool of blood. While she's a pool of blood, she can't be cut, stabbed, or clubbed. She can re-form as a swift (so at the fastest, on her next turn) anywhere the pool occupies, pour herself through any opening that isn't water-tight, and gets a 10ft climb speed.

BESW

@Lord_Gareth [takes notes for Cthulhu Dark games]

2

Lord_Gareth

So aside from whatever uses you can think of for pouring yourself through the plumbing and under doors and suchlike, it provides a non-predictable delayed teleport and some mobility.

Also Stealth checks by soaking into the soil etc

Magician

00:34

Neat! I'd mostly use it to drown people.

Lord_Gareth

The only catch is you're only about two inches deep at any given time and you can't make melee or ranged attacks.

Which includes the Grapple needed to drown someone without assistance.

Mind you, your party is free to hold his face in your blood-body while he chokes out and screams into your sanguine essence.

Magician

So... if we're in a small room the extra radius just doesn't appear?

Lord_Gareth

More or less. PF's rules on areas handle it.

Mind you, what small room are you in where it's completely water tight but too small for you?

(It might also just climb up the walls and ceiling, gently dripping your own essence into the pool at the bottom while your victim looks helplessly for a way out)

Magician

For this, I'd find one. Given a pool's worth of blood, "let me in and bar the door" strategy would be useful.

Lord_Gareth

@Magician Swipe bag of holding over your victim, shake hard to drop them in deep. Jump in bag. Turn into blood. Party member draws the strings and ties it shut.

Your enemy is now trapped in a space with no walls that nonetheless has strict volume limits, which is entirely occupied by blood.

Slither out of bag when done

Magician

00:39

Lure them into custom Mordekainen's Luxurious Mansion (or whatever that's called).

BESW

Phrase of the day: "Go away you and your dog."

Magician

Oh, I know. Forcecage. Done.

BESW

[takes more Cthulhu Dark notes]

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth it sounds like that might be getting out of hand at level 20

turning into an olympic swimming pool (of blood) is a significant problem unless you're trying to destroy everything in the vicinity beneath a tidal wave (of blood).

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener It's a mystical process, not really a forceful one. Think of...think of a water elemental letting for of its humanoid shape.

It doesn't splash, it just relaxes

Magician

00:44

(of blood) is the name of my post-metal band.

No, I don't know what post-metal is either. I suspect it exists.

BESW

Post-metal

Post-metal is a fusion music genre, a mixture between the genres of post-rock, heavy metal, and shoegazing. Hydra Head Records owner and Isis frontman Aaron Turner originally termed the genre "thinking man's metal", demonstrating that his band was trying to move away from common metal conventions. "Post-metal" is the favored name for the growing genre, but it is also referred to as "metalgaze" or "shoegaze metal" as a play on shoegazing, as well as "atmospheric metal", and "experimental metal", though this last term is also used to describe avant-garde metal. == History == Journalist Simon Reynolds...

Also, there are plenty of instances where a lot of finely distributed liquid is really useful.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Are you telling me that Pathfinder can employ my Crimson Countesses to build improbably large structures?

BESW

Assuming she doesn't coagulate?

Lord_Gareth

She doesn't.

BESW

Well then.

Adeptus

00:48

BESW

Magician

@BESW That's how post-metal albums should be mailed out, yeah.

@Adeptus I think that's fictional. Though some metal comes close to being ambient.

Forrestfire

@doppelgreener I did some math, and it turns out it's closer to a decently-large aboveground pool

Adeptus

@Magician yes it is fictional. Though some of those genres might exist (or could be argued to describe some artists)

doppelgreener

01:10

@Forrestfire okay not so bad

but turning into a significantly large body of water sounds like a potential significant impediment to movement and doing stuff

Kaz_king

Hey I am having issues understanding how this granted domain ability is important. (D&D 3.5)

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth @Lord_Gareth is the radius of a sphere?

Kaz_king

Use scrolls, wands, and other devices with spell completion or spell trigger activation as a wizard of one-half your cleric level (at least 1st level). For the purpose of using a scroll or other magic device, if you are also a wizard, actual wizard levels and these effective wizard levels stack.

How does this effect scroll/wand usage?

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener 2-inch-deep pool.

@Kaz_king Scrolls are more difficult to use if you're not of the appropriate level to cast the spell upon them.

doppelgreener

ok, phew. spherical growth by volume is hugely exponential.

BESW

01:20

@doppelgreener A 2-inch-deep pool with surface area of 5x5 feet per level.

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener So...much...blood.

Adeptus

@Kaz_king Slightly simplified & from memory - Scrolls & wands can only be activated (easily) by characters who can cast the spells (unless you use the Use Magical Device skill, which has a chance of failure). So, this lets your cleric use "wizard-only" items without risk of failure.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Why are you noting this for Cthulu Dark?

BESW

@Kaz_king Wands use the spell trigger mechanic, which requires that you have a class spell list which contains the spell in the wand. So having a wizard caster level lets you use wands with spells that wizards have access to but clerics don't.

Kaz_king

Thanks Adeptus and BESW!

BESW

01:22

Scrolls are more complicated, but the principle is the same: the closer you are to being able to cast the spell on your own, the easier it is to use a scroll of that spell. So pretending to be a wizard makes it easier to use wizard-spell scrolls.

doppelgreener

@BESW LG said radius of 5 feet per level

BESW

@doppelgreener Oh, radius. I misread.

doppelgreener

which is different because that means exponential growth

at level 20 that means 148,267 L or 148 cubic metres or 5236 cubic feet.

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener For the sphere or the pool?

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth for a 2-inch deep pool with radius 5 * 20 feet

BESW

01:25

@Lord_Gareth It's the math for a cylinder.

doppelgreener

if the pool can't condense its height and width by growing taller, it covers enough space to count as a Colossal creature.

for perspective, an olympic swimming pool has about 2,500,000 L, so this is less than 10% of the volume of an olympic swimming pool, but flat and thus spread out.

Lord_Gareth

Which is a looooot of blood

doppelgreener

If the pool can condense itself into a cube or a sphere, a Large cube is up to 4096 cubic feet, and a Huge cube is up to 32,768 cubic feet. Since the pool has a volume of 5236 cubic feet at level 20, at its smallest it is a Huge... sphere/cube of blood.

BESW

@Lord_Gareth You'd have to drain nearly 500 blue whales.

doppelgreener

Also, probably far more horrifying than a Huge gelatinous cube, on account of being made of blood.

Lord_Gareth

01:30

@BESW I can only imagine that the denizens of the Quasi-Elemental Plane of Blood (found at the border between Water and Negative Energy) are deeply confused as to where their living room keeps vanishing to.

Magician

1. Be a high level Crimson Countess.
2. Get eaten by a gelatinous cube.
3. Turn to a pool's worth of blood.
4. ???
5. Profit.

doppelgreener

for reference, an American football field is 57596.4 square feet (120 x 53.33 yards).

BESW

This is, by the way, over 345,000 pounds of blood.

4

So it's still rather less weight than a single blue whale that hasn't had its blood drained for the project.

(About 157 metric tons, compared to the whale's roughly 200 metric tons.)

doppelgreener

this 2-inch deep pool would have a surface area of 31,415.9 square feet

Lord_Gareth

This is, incidentally, why it does not pay to look too closely at the spacing math in PF, because suddenly that 20 foot fireball you're casting gets a lot scarier

doppelgreener

01:35

meaning it would cover ~54.5% of a football field

@Lord_Gareth it's frightening

Magician

I'm learning that there's the imperial, metric and blue whale units of measurement.

4

doppelgreener

but anyway, suggestion: let them condense down to half or a quarter of that quantity ;)

@Magician number of horns on a unicorn acre in teaspoons per lightyear

BESW

@Magician There's also elephants: in terms of weight-on-the-ground, it's getting 23 African elephants to stand on one half of a football field.

Magician

I'm also learning that blue whales are henceforth separated into the ones who've had all of their blood drained for the Project and the rest.

@doppelgreener Wat.

BESW

@Magician Well, we drained between 5 and 10% of 'em.

Yes. This spell produces blood equal to 10% of all the blue whale blood in the world.

Magician

01:39

Class feature, I think.

BESW

Same smell. (kinda coppery)

Magician

Blood Pool: Turn to a volume of blood equal to 0.5% of total blue whale blood in the world, per level.

BESW

I used to have a link to a (now likely dead) site which converted your ordinary units into the weight, surface area, and volume of whales, Wales, the Prince of Wales, London double-decker busses, Nelson's Column, and others.

(Yes, they had the surface area of the Prince of Wales.)

Joshua Aslan Smith

lol

BESW

Ahah! Found it again.

Adeptus

01:44

@doppelgreener ha

BESW

The Size of Wales.

@Lord_Gareth Honestly, at the time I was mostly taken by the idea of a climbing pool of blood. It's the kind of thing Lovecraft would come up with after seeing a superfluid.

doppelgreener

@Adeptus [stares, achieves enlightenment, transcends to the tao]

Adeptus

@doppelgreener (credit to this site)

BESW

I'm thinking that the best use of "turn into 500 blues whales' worth of blood" is to inflict structure/terrain/psychological damage.

Use it while standing on top of your enemy's mansion, splashing down the outside walls and coating the windows, seeping through the walls and floors, warping wood, ruining priceless paintings, and driving men mad.

Use it on the battlefield for instant mud and demoralisation.

Fake horrifying omens! Ruin food stores! Provide light lubrication for moving heavy objects!

Magician

Drown your enemies in your blood! Wait...

BESW

01:59

That 2-inch-deep limit isn't going to stand in the way of being an awesome vermin extermination service.

Magician

Also, I'm pretty sure a level 20 character deciding to mess with you is a horrifying omen.

BESW

No, no. That's not an omen. That's a doom.

...I wonder, do you get to choose what kind of blood it is?

"Blood of xenomorph!"

Magician

You proooobably can't do that, unless you are a xenomorph crimson countess. Oh @Lord_Gareth, I have a new monster idea for you.

Another possible use is to be a highly effective disease vector.

BESW

You might also be able to set up a lucrative business as an all-you-can-eat-but-keep-your-figure buffet/spa for vampires.

Lord_Gareth

02:17

Incidentally, have the two of you seen the beginning of the current boss fight in Gaiden?

BESW

Beginning beginning?

Lord_Gareth

wildwestscifi.net/gencrawlgaiden/12431 <-The opening flurry of actions

Party chose to wait to see what the enemy would do

The enemy did a lot

BESW

Ah, yes.

Very "marvellous initiative," I think?

Lord_Gareth

@BESW ?

BESW

@Lord_Gareth Each person, at the end of his turn, chooses who goes next of all the people who haven't yet gone that round.

It's used in the Marvel RPG and Atomic Robo, among others.

Lord_Gareth

02:25

@BESW In the context of Gaiden, the party used the Wait action.

doppelgreener

also i realise I didn't ping you so you might have missed it

@Lord_Gareth I suggest allowing someone to opt for a more compact pool of blood, i.e. 1/4 the surface area, so that they do not turn into something colossal that does not require half a football field's worth of space.

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener PF area rules mostly handle this.

doppelgreener

@Lord_Gareth they do?

BESW

The countess will expand to fill the area available to her until she reaches the limit of the spell's area or encounters an obstacle.

Lord_Gareth

@doppelgreener I'm going to presume they do, because almost a year of extremely detai-oriented rules fetishists looking at it hasn't turned up an issue yet

BESW

02:35

Unfortunately, the specific nature of the feature makes this... odd, because the only obstacle she could possibly encounter is an airtight seal.

So in almost every scenario she'll keep expanding through cracks in the walls, under doors, and through loose soil, until she hits the half-a-football-field limit.

This could be a great way to scout a dungeon's layout.

2

doppelgreener

BLARGH.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Feature ^_^

doppelgreener

today is too frustrating. ;_;

Lord_Gareth

> Childe ... I read "photosynthesizing sharks" the wrong way. It was brilliant.
[21:34] Childe >absorb light
[21:34] Childe >produce sharks

Miniman

@doppelgreener [Nods]

doppelgreener

02:38

i had a request for equipment lodged in the beginning of december, then in the middle of december the same person handling my request sent out a mass-mail form saying "if you want this equipment, fill out this form" - sent out at 10:30am, due by 1pm, anyone who doesn't misses out. Apparently that was me, and I didn't respond to the form and that my other request no longer counted, because they "didn't have time to chase everyone up."

i.e. they didn't tell anyone at all that their requests weren't being handled anymore

(note that the form was soliciting requests; I had already submitted a request, I actually only even found the form at something like 12:55pm)

BESW

Have a fire ferret to cheer you up.

Miniman

@doppelgreener I went away for a week's holidays and appear to have lost my access to a bunch of different things for no reason at all.

doppelgreener

@Miniman i got that too, and got my account locked relatively harmlessly. my colleague went away for a week extra, and had every privilege necessary for his work removed.

@Lord_Gareth this is beautiful

@BESW this does not seem to be enough to overcome annoyance at someone who did not do their due diligence and screwed me over because "they didn't have time"

this equipment is a monitor big enough to do the work I'm doing, compared to a small 4:3

BESW

Clearly, that job is operated by a crank.

Lord_Gareth

[Endless bro hugs are given to @doppelgreener]

doppelgreener

02:45

@BESW ... this is possible

@Lord_Gareth thank you

@BESW (i like this panel a lot)

BESW

[patpat] Your monitor woes are not unshared.

doppelgreener

@BESW if someone could channel the collective woes of this building into one point of energy, it could be used to power the giant laser of a fully armed and operational battle-station

BESW

Is there some recourse re: "I submitted a form and was given no notice that I had to re-submit"?

doppelgreener

but yes you need a better one too if you're working off your laptop!!1!

@BESW i am going to Speak To People Firmly And Seek Advice And Recourse once lunchbreak is over

BESW

Good. And don't eat angry.

doppelgreener

02:48

i already ate, i ate fuming silently

BESW

Aw.

This is very sweet and lovely and then it ends with awesome.

doppelgreener

@BESW yes/yes/yes

(i read it that way too)

Shalvenay

just did my first review xD

Lord_Gareth

@Shalvenay Of?

Shalvenay

late answer

BESW

03:03

Anybody here got experience with pen tablets?

Adeptus

@BESW a tiny bit... my stepdad has a Surface 2, & my wife has a Galaxy Note 2014. I have used both a little

...or were you meaning PC peripherals?

BESW

I mean hardware that replaces the mouse interface with a stylus interface, often for the purpose of digital art.

Adeptus

03:19

Ah. I have even less experience with them... except to say that most people recommend Wacom branded ones

BESW

Yeah, I've seen that too--but if you dig deeper, Wacom seems to have a chronic problem with flimsy USB ports.

And they appear to have discontinued most of their smooth-surface tablets in favour of a paper-textured surface which wears out pen nibs ten times faster.

doppelgreener

I sought some advice and some recourse has been put in motion. Here's hoping it works out OK.

@BESW Yes, I've used these.

Adeptus

@BESW ...and then sells ten times as many replacement nibs? Marketing beats user experience, yet again...

BESW

The general attitude is that Wacom's much higher pricing is worth it in quality, and I don't want to indulge in false economy by going for a cheaper tablet that won't work for me.

doppelgreener

@BESW Any questions about them?

BESW

03:21

But there are lots of quieter rumblings.

@doppelgreener [crosses fingers, knocks on wood]

doppelgreener

@BESW thanks :)

BESW

@doppelgreener I'm doing research for buying my first drawing tablet, and I'm feeling kinda lost.

By and large the line is that Wacom is the only way to go, backed up by lots of experience from every sector, but I keep seeing little hints that maybe there's more to it than that.

Adeptus

I was looking into Cintiq alternatives for my wife. (That's the drawing tablet/monitor by Wacom). There is one that has favourable reviews (some people prefer it to Cintiq for some features) made by Yiynova, which is quite a bit cheaper.

doppelgreener

There are other good companies. I don't recall off the top of my head which ones are good. Some are bad. Wacom is extraordinary and the best, so you have security in picking out that brand. I haven't heard about issues with them having flimsy USB ports. The pen nibs do wear out, but consider that you're going to be rubbing them against a grip-pad over and over: they're gonna wear out.

By the scratch-test rule, either the pen nibs are being worn out by the pad, or the pad is being worn out by the pen nibs, and one of these is really really bad.

BESW

My issue isn't that the nibs are going to wear out--that's expected and natural.

doppelgreener

03:26

There are various types of pen nibs, some meant to simulate the grip of a pencil and others meant to simulate the giving pressure of a brush head. The pencil nibs wear out faster, because they're designed to be softer. (I use these.)

BESW

It's that they've changed to a different surface which makes the nibs wear out faster.

This makes me... wary... of their overall attitude toward design.

doppelgreener

@BESW What does the new surface do? Let's presume it has a purpose other than evil machinations to make people buy more nibs.

BESW

@doppelgreener It's supposed to feel more like drawing on paper.

doppelgreener

@BESW Great! I would be happy with this.

One of the main issues -- complaints, features to get used to -- with tablets is that the surface is slippery. It's slick. This means it doesn't hold the natural resistance of canvas or paper that holds your pen still.

David Wilkins

Hallo
Is any one on that has DMed Hoard of the Dragon Queen?
I am curious if starting a larger much higher group at the beginning would be of more value story-wise versus starting them mid-adventure

BESW

03:29

@doppelgreener Ah, that's a thing none of the reviews and guides mentioned.

doppelgreener

Yeah. Personally a surface that feels more like drawing on paper sounds great. More pen nibs? Sure, fine, gimme.

BESW

What about size?

David Wilkins

Just read back...you should ask [design.se]

Miniman

@DavidWilkins Yo

BESW

The GD.SE chat isn't very helpful on this sort of thing, and on the main site it'd be a shopping question or get redirected to a less graphic-design-oriented stack as a hardware question.

doppelgreener

03:34

@BESW My first wacom tablet was an enormous intuos3 with an active area close to the size of a monitor. My more recent one is an intuos4 with an active area the size of an A5 piece of paper, and I will never buy a large one again.

A4 or A5 are sizes I would go for.

Miniman

11

A: How can I start Hoard of the Dragon Queen with 4th level characters?

Warning: spoilers abound Tl:dr: Start at the 4th module with Leosin and Ontharr giving the characters the mission. You could start at the 4th module! The game expects the characters to be level 4 at this point, so there wouldn't be any balance issues. The only problem should be that your charac...

David Wilkins

Ahh thought you were looking for a tool... hey @Miniman

doppelgreener

Because of the grip issue, it can be harder to control large sweeping gestures like you can on paper. It isn't the same feeling at all, you're guiding your cursor carefully and it's a little different.

Miniman

@DavidWilkins Hey! That question should give you a starting point.

doppelgreener

Personally, my fine motor control is great, but my hands shake slightly. So I prefer a small surface that lets me do most of the drawing in small motions with mostly only my fingers and possibly rotation of my hand whilst a portion of my palm (the butt of it opposite my thumb) remains steady on the surface.

My small motions then translate into ~4x larger ones on the monitor, and it works out well.

David Wilkins

03:37

Thanks @Miniman

doppelgreener

(This doesn't stop me doing fine detail, and if I want fine detail I'm usually zooming in.)

Usually, the raw copy of a digital painting is 4x larger than the end result you see.

Some artists will go far higher into the single digits.

Miniman

@DavidWilkins Incidentally, what level are they?

David Wilkins

@Miniman they will be 6 or 7

BESW

I've been looking at the Intuos Small or Medium. The Medium is about A5 (216 x 135 mm), and the Small is half that (152 x 95 mm).

Miniman

@DavidWilkins Hmmm

doppelgreener

03:40

The end result is deliberately only 1/4 the size. This means the artist can zoom in and do really fine detail. Also, a common issue with digital painting is that the brush edges can never be sharp enough: if you make a painting 1/4 the size, the brush edges are suddenly going to be really sharp.

Miniman

The answer I gave there worked because of the structure of the campaign

doppelgreener

As an example of this zooming:

Miniman

I'm not sure about starting much further through the story than that

doppelgreener

End result

David Wilkins

I really want them to have backstory but not take long to get there

doppelgreener

03:41

(source of the first image, please note the '40% zoom' line in the bottom left of that first image)

David Wilkins

I suppose I could scale a few encounters and railroad storyline

doppelgreener

That person's painting at, I don't know, 10x the final size probably.

@BESW I recommend a Medium.

In my personal opinion, small would be too small.

BESW

Yeah, I'm leaning toward that too.

It's twice as much money, but it does seem like that'd be a false economy.

David Wilkins

Actually, railroading might be accepted by players at thispoint, as, long as, it is limited

BESW

However, I'm looking at the "Pen and Touch" rather than the "Pro": P&T looks sufficient for my needs, so spending twice as much again on the Pro would probably be false economy?

@DavidWilkins What does this mean, precisely? What kind of backstory do you want them to have?

"This part seems slow." *adds murderous telepathic ice worms* God, I love my job.

Tweeted by UrsulaV on January 28, 2015 at 3:44 AM

(Ice worms are a real thing, and there's a song about them which was intended to make people want to vacation in northern Canada.)

@doppelgreener Do you have any experience/opinions re: buying from Wacom vs buying from a third-party vendor?

Bankuei

04:03

@doppelgreener we quit his game.

BESW

@Bankuei [wave]

doppelgreener

04:24

@BESW Both of my tablets were purchased directly from Wacom.

BESW

@doppelgreener Any experience with customer service, warranty, etc?

doppelgreener

@Bankuei hi and thanks!

@BESW i placed an online order, everything went smoothly, i don't recall warranty details but i also don't recall having any trouble.

i bought a thing and it arrived a few weeks later.

(i don't remember how many weeks. could have been 2 or 3 or 4.)

BESW

05:01

Mental note: strategy for Fate GMing to encourage player-driven reveals: The party enters a room. In the centre of the room is a big lumpy object covered by a sheet. It is obviously important, but you can't figure out what it is because it's covered by a sheet.

This strategy can probably be taken metaphorically as well as literally.

doppelgreener

The player says what it is when they pull off the sheet?

BESW

Yup. It lets the GM say "Important Thing Goes Here" but gives the players carte blanche to say what and why the Important Thing is Important and why it's Here.

This helps the GM control the pacing of the session--one of a Fate GM's main jobs--without stepping on the agency of players to influence the shape of the plot.

Magician

One of my players has decided he doesn't really like to be given plot agency like that. I'm trying to get him to write a guest post about it, but basically he says the fun of discovering the plot is incompatible with the fun of authoring the plot (makes sense) and he generally prefers the former.

doppelgreener

I'm noticing that in games, I am for some reason not feeling totally comfortable making whatever i want to have happen happen.

like, it doesn't occur to me to do radical stuff.

Like, say, blow a hole through the wall of the tomb with a kilogram of explosives.

Magician

There's a very interesting distinction here, between in-character agency and plot-agency, and he's fine with declaring things about his character.

BESW

05:08

@Magician @trogdor and I have been negotiating that line for almost two years now, trying to find the comfort point between the two extremes.

doppelgreener

That seems pretty reasonable to do, right? But I think I have two things going on:

(a) I don't want to destroy the GM's plans (this is Fate, and an RPG, why am I having this thought, I am already destroying their plans within the first five minutes)

(b) I don't want to overstep my bounds and disrupt the story for my peers, who may be enjoying the adventure not involving giant holes in the walls, and I feel that only the GM has the authority to introduce such major change or define major events and plot stuff.

But, this is Fate, and I should probably be totally within my bounds to say: "Right! Enough of this. We're going through the walls."

BESW

Part of it is having a group that's comfortable saying "Let's go through the walls!" AND saying "You know, I really don't want to go through the walls."

doppelgreener

Like, if I played Robo himself, and didn't decide to walk straight through a wall at some point when it would be very convenient to skip the nonsense down this hallway, what the heck would I be doing?

He's the guy who in his opening comic pulled the pin on a grenade because a bunch of guys were dogpiling him and wouldn't leave him alone.

BESW

But neither of those is going to help @Magician's player with the "I don't want to have extra-character agency" thing.

doppelgreener

@BESW Oh. Sorry. I am not trying to solve Magician's problem.

I am reflecting on my own problem, my apprehension to do this stuff.

BESW

05:13

Aye.

Magician

It's all related anyway.

BESW

I know Trogdor's struggled with both.

doppelgreener

Myself I'd be pretty happy to go defining plot.

... Only I am apprehensive to do so for the above reasons and it often doesn't occur to me to do it.

BESW

When he and I spent almost a year of twosies, my leaning on him to help define the details of the plot outside his own character was a major friction point for us.

doppelgreener

@BESW Third part: Having a GM that's comfortable when someone says "Let's go through the walls!" and decides to take the course of the adventure into their own hands and redefine the status quo for how the adventure is going to go.

BESW

05:15

Yeah.

doppelgreener

I think I am apprehensive because I know you always have Plans.

BESW

During that year, I'd burnt out on the intense levels of prep needed for D&D 3.5 and 4e, but he preferred having a built world structure to explore (or at least the illusion of one) rather than being called on to help build the world as his character "discovered" it.

@doppelgreener My "good" prep is for the world to have plans: antagonists have plans, while GMs eagerly anticipate the party's making those plans irrelephant.

This is something I always struggle with implementing, though, especially when I have a radically different system and playstyle to adapt it to.

Magician

@BESW This. It's not that the player in question (lets call him J.) is uncomfortable making things up, he's our group's second GM. But when he is a player, he prefers to discover plot, to explore existing secrets, not make up new ones.

BESW

@Magician My solution thus far (it still needs work) has been for me to expand my "This is what the antagonist would do if the players didn't get in his way" approach to plotting to the world and the players: "This is what the world will be like unless/until a player comes up with something else," with the added element of having a few bits flagged for actively inviting player suggestions.

Magician

I'm not sure there even is a solution to this, if it comes down to preferences and what players find fun.

BESW

05:22

Yeah. My approach is... a kind of compromise so no player feels pressured to do it if he doesn't want to, but there's room for it when someone feels so moved.

If J. doesn't like having other players shift the narrative beneath his feet, then that's less compromisable.

Also when I call for input, I often narrow it down to a very specific thing.

For example, "Tell me what organisation is secretly developing efficient cold fusion technology." We decided it was amazon.com.

Magician

Heh. I think that's a good approach in general (stranding players in a wasteland of potential plotlines with nothing in sight is cruel), though won't really help in this case. It's still not discovering the story. I wonder if J. would feel better about being one of several players occasionally influencing the plot (and occasionally witnessing the influence of others), but I suspect that won't do it either.

There's an Expectation that I have overarching multithreaded plotlines, often correct.

BESW

Would he be okay with other players influencing the plot in extra-character ways if he wasn't pressured to join?

This is the sort of thing Trogdor and I had to actually sit down and hash out before we could start to find solutions during the Year Of Twosies.

Magician

He's ok with it in general, just doesn't find it as engaging. And I suspect he'd see other players' influence as directionless ideas (which it'll likely be) rather than cohesive plot to explore.

BESW

Directionless Ideas is my new One Direction parody band.

@Magician One of the roles of GM in Fate is to take the not-necessarily-connected ideas of the players and figure out how to bounce them against each other in interesting ways so they become connected.

Perhaps a better understanding of this will help J.?

(I'm specifically thinking about Fate Core's GMing advice about looking at the game's Issue aspects and the PCs' and NPCs' character aspects and thinking about how two or more of them could entangled to create a situation which needs action.)

Magician

05:43

I think he knows this. I'll poke him again to write the guest post, maybe that'll clarify things.

BESW

@PoojaRoy Are you perhaps looking for the graphic design chat room?

chat.stackexchange.com/rooms/1240/the-ink-spot

Ahah. Since you seem to have linked it in at least five different rooms at once, many of which seem irrelevant to the topic, I'm going to flag it as spam.

user61230

@BESW Which ones?

user61230

Oh, looks like it's been taken care of.

BESW

@Emrakul This one, the Bridge, the Nineteenth Byte, and the 2nd Monitor, for sure--I think I saw at least one other.

user61230

Looks like there are only four. Thanks!

user61230

05:50

Also hello!

BESW

Hi.

user61230

Wanna see something funny?

user61230

@BESW Hi.

BESW

Funny ha-ha or funny peculiar?

user61230

I was just curious xD

BESW

05:53

Try this one out.

user61230

Ahaha glorious.

user61230

Nope!

BESW

grin

(45 of 286 grins are not mine.)

user61230

wave

Grubermensch

You say relephant about 3x as much as elephant.

2

Honestly I expected fewer elephants.

Lord_Gareth

05:57

Someone should catch Emrakul up on the pool-of-blood math

user61230

I've so far done all but six of thirty-three tasks today, leaving a backlog of a mere 38 tasks!

Lord_Gareth

@Emrakul But do you want to know about people who turn into 500 blue whales' worth of blood?

BESW

@Lord_Gareth Please don't forget that it can climb. That's important.

user61230

I'm... d-do I?

BESW

(Especially since one is unlikely to find a flat area half the size of a football field in the average adventuring environment.)

Grubermensch

06:01

@Emrakul Right answer.

@BESW I dispute this claim. My dungeons have always had an epic-sized hall for the explicit purpose of being an awesome combat venue.

Lord_Gareth

@BESW Needs more Undermountain.

zespri

hello

Lord_Gareth

@zespri WELCOME TO THE LAND OF TWO THRONES, SUPPLICANT

SPEAK THY QUESTION AND PRAY FOR MERCY

zespri

So if you are not really in miniature combat and you also don't have good imagination to immerse yourself into a setting enough to enjoy it then basically RPG is not for you. Right or wrong?

BESW

For a very narrow value of RPG, yes. But RPGs cover a much wider range of experience than just those two.

Lord_Gareth

06:16

@zespri Wrong. Lots of RPGs don't ask you to do either of those things. Toon, for instance, doesn't ask you to immerse yourself at all, because the "setting" such as it is is a comedic genre.

Neither does Everyone is John.

BESW

Very few RPGs require immersion to be enjoyable, and while many of the most visible RPG systems use miniatures, the vast majority do not.

zespri

I'll explain you why I ask. On one hand I had very little experience in RPG. I've participated in a campaign once a few years ago (in the time of DD 3) which was munchkiny. That is it had little apart from combat. I did not enjoy it alot.

On the other hand I was always strengly drawn to RPG I read phb and dmb for dd3 and than dd4 I read fudge and fate rules I studied srd d20 etc. But I did not play any of those. Now I have a small group and we do regular board gaming. I want to introduce them to role playing but I have so little experience myself. And if I don't do this well they will be turned off in no time

So I'm debating if it is worth it, and if it is where do I start =)

BESW

You'll find a lot of useful questions and answers under searches like this one.

zespri

I feel that I have only one chance to make them try that and if they don't like then that will be a topic already closed. potentially forever

right, that's useful, I'll have a read

Oh this is a good one rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/29058/…

I actually played paranoia

just forgot about that

BESW

Generally speaking, I'd suggest using something that requires very little in the way of rules and preparation (any D&D edition asks for a lot of time and energy before play starts) and which draws on something everyone in the group likes (a theme, genre, or story concept that's found in everyone's favourite films, for example).

zespri

06:26

also was not very satisfying - I felt railroaded all the way

BESW

And, well. It's not your job to make sure they have fun in spite of themselves. If they aren't interested in giving it a fair shot and being part of the fun-making, it doesn't matter if they're trying an RPG or poker or Frisbee--they won't have fun.

(And neither will you, with all that pressure.)

zespri

well, I'm guessing that I myself not sure why I want to play RPG. I have never had a satisfying RPG experience so I don't even know what it should feel like. And if I can't feel it I can't give it to other either... For whatever reason I believe that I'd enjoy it if it's done right. But I don't know how =)

BESW

Perhaps if you present it to your friends in terms of asking them to help you figure that out, they'll be more invested and supportive, and more forgiving as you learn together.

There's a somewhat common idea in the RPG community that the GM needs to present a facade of perfect competence or the game will fall to pieces, but my games have only gotten more fun as I've learned to invite my players into the process so we can learn to improve together.

The basic healthy "my friends and I are playing a game together" interaction shouldn't change just because of the game being played.

zespri

well it's easy to explain - the perfect competence part. they don't know what to do. And if I don't either then we are just wasting time. For board games I'm always the one who reads the rules, prepares and then explains the rules to the others. On a few occasions I have not done this, we had to can a session because it was too boring as no one knew what to do

Grubermensch

This is why we are suggesting you look for a game with a simpler ruleset. That way you can focus on having a good time with your friends, rather than sweating the details of a giant rulebook.

BESW

06:39

There are RPGs with rules that fit on a page, or a paragraph, and RPGs which expect you to read 300+ pages before you start, and RPGs that expect you to only read the rules one bit at a time as you go and not beforehand.

I'm kinda tempted to suggest Microscope.

It's a halfway point between RPG and party game, with strong but relatively simple rules (including "read this bit to everyone now" paragraphs to help explain as you go), and a really powerful creative experience that requires no immersion or tactics.

However it is NOT going to give you the experience you imagine when you read the D&D manuals.

Grubermensch

For something that is closer to that experience, you might have a look at this answer recommending Mutants & Masterminds. I myself have no experience with M&M but the answer gives a nice explanation of why it would be a good system for a group that is very new to roleplaying.

zespri

06:57

Microscope, huh?

have not heard of this one

BESW

You won't find the perfect game for your group on the first try, either. That shouldn't discourage you from keeping on trying any more than not playing your favourite card game the first time out made you give up on card games.

zespri

@Grubermensch thank you, will have a look

user61230

Microscope is a game I highly recommend for the right group.

BESW

Microscope.

@Emrakul I've read a couple blogs about people using it as an after-school activity for kids with great success, which is awesome.

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