TRPG General Chat

Shalvenay

00:12

LOL. I suspect the authors of the 2e PHB didn't quite know what they were writing when they wrote the description of the Fireball spell :P they managed to write "A fireball is an explosive burst of flame, which detonates with a low roar" and "The burst of the fireball creates little pressure" about the same spell

...that's not a detonation. :P

Magician

02:46

D&D On The Road, random things you meet while traveling, a tweet at a time.

A caravan of merchants led by a female halfling named Efrix Chere. Their wagons are not pulled by oxen, but by enslaved ogres.

Tweeted by dndencroad on June 13, 2015 at 1:00 PM

Polyducks

09:10

Good morrow!

@Shalvenay the reason for the stipulation '[it] creates little pressure' is because of the habit of gamers to try and use fireball as some sort of internal combustion engine spell. It removes some of the physics involved and prevents any use for it other than the intended (though you can still use fireball for uses other than killing orcs).

In this case, detonation is referring to the point where the fireball spell turns from a small ball of light into its 'explosion' form. The caster choses where that transition happens.

Alex Mitan

09:26

I like "Good morrow". Good morrow!

I don't know what we're talking about specifically, but I'd like to take this opportunity to express how mixed my feelings are about fire magic not being treated "realistically" in any game, ever. If leaving a cigarette lit can devastate a building in the 21st century, I just don't know what to think about massive fireballs just basically being orange bolts of arcane energy. Realistically, whatever you'd set on fire would get most of their surroundings ablaze and kidney failure in a few days.

a computing pun

Okay, but also whoever you hit with a sword is going to suffer something like severe blood loss, broken bones, shock, and loss of consciousness. not 1d8 damage.

There are games with realistic combat systems; people tend to call them "gritty", "unfair" or occasionally "swingy and lethal".

Alex Mitan

Yeah, but.. I'm talking about the non-direct-damage potential of stuff

Ok, a sword would normally just basically be a melee gun in terms of potency

But you can still only use it to cut things

Fire magic could set an entire house ablaze from a mile away, nobody would know

And god forbid you're fighting indoors

Ice magic is alright too, it's a very finite thing, ice doesn't normally spread

Magician

10:13

@AlexMitan If it's detailed magic rules you're after, take a look at Ars Magica. I believe 4th edition is free, and 5th is complete. Warning: you may require academic training in philosophy to fully appreciate it. And/or have a philosopher on hand.

It's not that Ars Magica has detailed fire spreading rules. It's that in it fire spreads upwards because it loves the Sphere of Fire that is the sky, IIRC, as Aristotle declared.

Aristotle is totally a lich, by the way, and I will one day kill him.

Alex Mitan

10:28

Hah, that sounds amazing, might have look

How rules-heavy is it?

Magician

VERY. Here's an example:

4

A: How much space does housing people take up?

In the core book, an important note (p221) on the extreme research saga: Read several single-volume histories of the area in question, to get a more balanced view. Find, and read, histories of specific aspects, such as the history of a single city, or of the law, or of the Church, or ...

It's a different kind of rules-heavy from D&D. And a lot of it is understanding how things work rather than knowing hundreds of feats.

Alex Mitan

Wait.. I know this question

Was it about Ars Magica?

Wait, so you have to be familiar with Real Life mechanics to play Ars Magica? To hell with that!

Magician

10:44

Um, what gave you that idea?

Alex Mitan

Isn't that what you meant? Understanding how things in general work, like that housing space question

I'm a bit confused

How is it different from D&D heaviness?

Magician

You need to understand how Aristotelean physics work. Because that's the way the world functions in Ars Magica. In addition to that you need to understand how magic works (these are linked). From there it's relatively easy to make any spell you want. Any spell.

Alex Mitan

For someone very easily entertained by RPG SRDs, would it be fun to look over the 4e SRD?

Magician

I don't believe there is such a thing. Because SRD would not be a place to learn Ars Magica from. It's safe to say it's not a kind of RPG you've encountered before.

Alex Mitan

I'm looking at some beast mob sheets

I'm not going to want to GM anything that complex any time soon..

But the spellcrafting sounds amazing..

Magician

11:03

You can't really have in-depth rules without complexity.

Alex Mitan

I know, I know, I'm past that über-emotional phase of "heavy sucks", and honestly I'd like to play a game like Ars Magica some time, but never GM

I have a very XY and subjective question for anyone here familiar with Fate..

One of the players is going to have a character capable of assimilating the aspects of others into himself after he or someone else kills them... I'm thinking he should be able to have around 3 of those assimilated aspects at at time, maximum... The question is... should I give him a separate pool beyond his 5 base aspects or should I have him replace his three non-Trouble and non-High Concept aspects with his Assimilation Pool?

Magician

The latter, and replacing all 3 may be too much.

Alex Mitan

So instead of him having 5 base aspects and a pool of 3 assimilation, you're saying something like 3 and 3?

Either his HC or Trouble or both will be about his oozy abomination-ness, depending on what story he inevitably comes up with

There's a chance he WANTS his character to have something of an identity crisis

Magician

5 total. Handle the rest as created through Create Advantage if absolutely needed.

Alex Mitan

Normally I'd say having a character with many aspects will "hog the spotlight", but he's a really, maybe overly, nice, shy guy

Magician

11:14

It's not so much hogging spotlight as it is stuff that won't come into play much.

Alex Mitan

True, but the pool aspects will keep changing around

Also, I'm thinking maybe they'll decay over time or manifest uncontrollably then vanish every now and then

I'll go for 20 mins, be back later, thanks for the feedback!

Alex Mitan

11:47

I'm back

It's not a very suitable question for the Stack, is it?

Zachiel

12:03

One wonders why I'm playing a DMM persist cleric who's jumping through hoops to get shapechange when I could be an incantatrix, have my cohort cast divine power in a ring of spellstoring and be basically the same melee powerhouse, plus immunity to criticals and precision damage, plus Arcane Strike, plus being a blaster or a god on top of it...

In other words, what do clerics have that wizards don't?

Alex Mitan

DMM = ?

Zachiel

@AlexMitan the Divine Metamagic feat

Basically, I don't like short duration spells so I always try to persist my buffs.

Miniman

12:21

@Zachiel It takes less work for Clerics to be melee powerhouses than Wizards, especially at low levels.

Zachiel

@Miniman I made a level 13 character. It also looks like it takes less work, but with less results.

Except HP

(Marginally, because the Wis and Con items occupy the same slot)

Miniman

@Zachiel Just noticed the word cohort in your previous sentence; if Leadership is in play, all normal considerations go out the window anyway.

Zachiel

Even without cohort. Party members, NPCs, a wand, a feat, whatever works for that.

Miniman

At that point, a martial class with someone else doing buffs for you is the same as a spellcaster doing buffs for themselves.

Zachiel

But the martial class still does not blast or god or get immunities (unless a dedicated spellcaster is devoting lots of resources to buffing him). The thing I'm complaining about is that a dedicated blaster/debuffer is better at being melee than be (a dedicated gish) if he gets a single spell cast on himself (while I'm no better blaster or debuffer if someone cast any spell, and I don't became a better gish than the debuffer/blaster either)

Or, in other words, I'm ranting over my incapablity to notice who the better gish was before creating my character.

Alex Mitan

12:36

"God"? Is "Godding" a thing in D&D?

Zachiel

@AlexMitan A god is a character that decides what opponents do (more or less). Like casting solid fogs or walls of force to single out an enemy, heavily debuff him and then lets some guys (maybe summoned creatures or measly cohorts) deal the damage and dispatch the harmless enemies.

Alex Mitan

Oh, okay

Hm, I have a couple questions on D&D.. how do you treat summons or hirelings? Separate characters with their own turn?

Zachiel

Speaking 3.5e, I have summons act in the summoner's character (unless they or the summoner delays or readies) and hirelings/familiars/companions/mounts are creatures with their own turn

More often than not, mounts delay to their master or vice-versa

Speaking 4e, the rules say (for class-related creatures like the beastmaster ranger / sentinel druid beast or for summons, spirit companions and so on) . But I started rolling monsters with the same name only once per group for monsters, I guess a large number of hirelings would be treated the same way (allied mooks using minion rules, I suppose. Anything greater than that gets his monster/character sheet and its own turn)

Alex Mitan

Hm, okay... I'm interested in how various systems do this

Wibbs

@AlexMitan be wary of trying to transfer the mechanical implementation of an idea from one system into another that has a completely different approach to its rules and the way its meant to be played

Alex Mitan

12:49

@Wibbs Yeah, I'm not looking to port them, I'm simply curious :)

Because the basic notion remains, no matter the system: a player taking multiple turns per exchange or not

Mostly.. I mean then you get things like Dungeon World and it all takes a new meaning

Wibbs

fair enough - just wanted to check as its a trap I've seen plenty of people fall into

Alex Mitan

Me included.. Thanks for the poke, @Wibbs

Zachiel

@AlexMitan Yeah, D&D 3.5e summoners usually take a long time rolling a plethora of weak attacks. Particularly nasty in play by chat where such a character easily takes more than half an hour with the others waiting for their turn. Then the fighter goes: "I full attack again, power attack set at 8" and rolls like 1/10 of the dice and calls it a day.

Alex Mitan

Yeah... time-hogging is what seems to be a problem with minion-masters here too... if I like anything in video games specifically more than RPGs, is how you can have a small army and still block nobody's enjoyment of the game

I mean in video games, I'm usually that or a healer, which again, healers and RPGs I guess don't go as well together

At least not in Fate, as far as I'm aware, since Fate is what I'm most interested in at the moment

Am I at least close to the truth, @BESW? Mechanically, healers aren't super well represented in RPGs, compared to other media, no?

Or "I have an army of minions while the guy to my right is a barbarian and we are equal in power and fun"-type characters

BESW

D&D-likes give a lot of attention to healers. Fate has trouble figuring out how to make a healer not ruin the pacing mechanism of stress.

Minion-summoning characters are difficult to balance in D&D-likes which don't have fractal-type mechanics. Fate does pretty well with 'em.

Alex Mitan

13:01

Mainly by treating a horde as one minion?

BESW

Or more commonly as part of the PC's own fractal.

Alex Mitan

Mhm.. alright, yeah, I was reading and experimenting in my head about that, since I will have a summoner in my party, and while I'm not going to get panicky again I would like to have some basic ideas, since the exams have begun and in about 3 weeks they're done

and we're free to get rolling

I'd really love your opinion on something, let me link the message

2 hours ago, by Alex Mitan

One of the players is going to have a character capable of assimilating the aspects of others into himself after he or someone else kills them... I'm thinking he should be able to have around 3 of those assimilated aspects at at time, maximum... The question is... should I give him a separate pool beyond his 5 base aspects or should I have him replace his three non-Trouble and non-High Concept aspects with his Assimilation Pool?

Is this how I do it?

this message and the few after it

BESW

Sure, that's one way you can do it.

Another is to have just one aspect like Unstable absorption you can compel for all of them, and all his stunt slots are left rotating instead of his aspects.

Or let him re-order his skills.

Alex Mitan

The main concern would be spotlight hogging, right? Usually

BESW

And not slowing things down.

Alex Mitan

13:09

I really think that's not going to be a problem, if anything one of his real-life problems is not hogging enough spotlight in general, maybe this'll make him have more of it and warm up

I think it's a very exciting character idea, he's inspired it from Magic The Gathering Black stuff

I can see him fighting some crystal drones or elementals and absorbing some of their characteristics, partially crystalising his own body and such

This was his inspiration

I feel much more confident, each of the players is going to have something going on for themselves, one of them is going to have a sweet backstory and motivation as well as summon, this guy's going to have a very interesting, slightly game-altering character concept, another will come and help with a decent understanding of the rules already and some minor play experience...

I want to thank you guys for helping me on here (/ putting up with me) all this time..

Wibbs

@AlexMitan well the therapy we've all been receiving has helped, and then there's the danger money ;p

Alex Mitan

Hah, aw..

I'm glad to be, at least to a tiny extent, a part of this

I keep seeing MTG cards, video game mobs, spells and such and two thoughts immediately arise:
1) How could I model this in Fate in an interesting and juicy way?
2) How much would the Stack hate me for rambling about changing the rules of a game I almost never played?

trogdor

13:26

@AlexMitan this has happened to me several times

I believe it has happened to BESW at least every once in a while as well

Alex Mitan

I was trying to sleep yesterday and I kept coming up with weird abilities for a Void Priest-like character

such as
**Null Rebalance:** X per game session, the Void Priest declares this stunt active. The next roll over +3 or under -3 becomes 0 instead.

**Nullify:** X per game session, the Priest declares an roll to be 0, at will. If done over the limit of X, the Void becomes unstable, and the GM gains a similar ability to use against the party.

Or things that trigger when somebody, anybody, rolls ++++ or ---- or 0000, to portray the impartiality of this looming, chaotic force

But that'd have a very low chance of triggering

trogdor

yeah, it does

that's the thing

if you take that kind of stunt it is very powerful, on the rare occasion you get to use it

Alex Mitan

How would Nullify be? Is it imbalanced?

trogdor

how would you determine X?

Alex Mitan

Hm... maybe X is just... 1 or something

trogdor

13:35

take one stunt slot per point?

Alex Mitan

or even zero!

Maybe the GM can do it as many times as he does it

For X=0

trogdor

hmm, the problem would mostly come from invalidating -4's and such

Alex Mitan

For x=1, it's a typical once-per-game-session-something-very-cool-happens

trogdor

but highly negative rolls are kinda rare

yeah

Alex Mitan

Yeah, but "the void" could lash back and use the same ability to invalidate HIS +3/+4s

or even more annoyingly, his party's

So it becomes more than just a spell, it becomes a thing of "Do I use my ability, but risk putting my party in the way of this cosmic force later?"

Which, at least conceptually, I like

trogdor

13:39

yeah,.. it seems like a very Atomic Robo/megastunt type of stunt

because in that you can take stunts called megastunts that do more or different things than normal stunts

and you can add things in those stunts to decrease their cost, but the things you add are drawbacks

Alex Mitan

Hm, any list of such things?

And maybe it's a very biased thing to say, but right now I'm just messing around with theories as a GM.. if one of my players came up with this idea to me, I'd just let them have it as a reward for thinking outside the box and making it super thematic

trogdor

though to be fair, part of the balance there is that if you have more than,.. I think the number is 5, stunts worth of stuff (with the drawbacks subtracting stunt "points") the GM gets extra Fate Points to use against your group

@AlexMitan there is sort of a list in the Atomic Robo RPG book

I could list an example, but not like, all of it

Alex Mitan

I recall Thomas Edison's There are no rules..right?

trogdor

yes

also, the character the system and comic are named after has Atomic Strength

Alex Mitan

That was really cool, I'd love to see others...

I asked a Reddit question about the strangest and best stunts that they're aware of, with no results

trogdor

13:45

weapon2, and absolute superiority in terms of strength against normal humans Physique

so any physique roll where that would apply and he isn't rolling against someone else with that same benefit, he just succeeds

so say he is arm wrestling a normal human, he just wins

but if he goes against some mutant or something with the same stunt benefit, suddenly they both roll as normal.

Alex Mitan

Hah, okay..

I'm not a huge fan of Weapon:X type things, at least in theory

trogdor

and both those things, the weapon 2 for attacks and the physique benift are both part of the same stunt

Alex Mitan

I'm ok with the idea of damage ceilings and floors though

trogdor

@AlexMitan it isn't as flashy as many stunts, but the benifit is, if you really want a combat character, you could get a plus 2 and a weapon 2 on attacks

Alex Mitan

Has an armor system that goes something like Something with armor X ignores all stress below X been implemented already ?

trogdor

13:49

and weapon/armor 2 are perfectly acceptable stunt placeholders if you are having trouble coming up with something a little more creative at the present moment

Alex Mitan

Armor* sorry

trogdor

@AlexMitan sort of

Alex Mitan

So far I've heard of ignores X damage and can't take more damage than X

In the official books at least

trogdor

Atomic Robo has a stunt that lets him ignore conventional weapons, namely and most commonly bullets and knives and such

and he has like armor X against everything else

I think it's 2 but X is a good placeholder cause it is just an example

Alex Mitan

In the sense of ignores X stress right?

trogdor

13:51

no

Alex Mitan

By that I mean, reduce all stress by X

trogdor

if someone rolls really high with the exact type of weapons this stunt is tailored to, they only get boosts and such on him

he takes no stress from attacks that the stunt includes

but all anyone needs to do is make attacks with weapons that don't fall in that category and suddenly half his stunt doesn't work

and even people shooting guns at him can get boosts on him, like for example distracting him while the high tech robot on their side sneaks up and punches him with an attack that actually does ignore his stunt.

also, any electromagnet will just basically work on him, though technically in game mechanic terms they are issued as compels.

Alex Mitan

So far I'm aware of 3 kinds of armour:
1) If I have armour X and I take X+Y stress, I only take Y stress
2) If I have armour X, I can only take at most X stress per attack
3) If I have armour X, attacks that are >=X deal full stress, but the rest are ignored or just get boosts

And for weaponry:
1) If I have Weapon X, when I succeed on an attack, I deal X extra damage
2) If I have Weapon X, when I succeed on an attack, I deal at least X damage. Rolls higher than X act normally

trogdor

@AlexMitan I am not sure where in Fate those second two exist

Alex Mitan

2) exists in Fate Toolkit, I think, and 3) is something I came up with as theory

trogdor

13:58

ah

Alex Mitan

fate-srd.com/fate-system-toolkit/…

I like my idea for the simple reason that it justifies a rock of 1 stress being thrown at a heavily armored guy of Armour 3 doesn't do much, but a boulder of 3 stress does, and it crushes him as you'd expect

and it'd need specifics and justification, an Arcane Bolt of 2 stress would still get through

but it'd be on a case-by-case basis, handled narratively, and nobody would argue against huge, spectacular attacks

As in, a sneaky dagger stab could arguably get through at 2 if it makes sense, but a ballista bolt or fireball or thunderbolt or hate speech at 5 always would

Whereas a crude insult at 2 still would

Miniman

The moment when you just have to give up on seeing a question fixed.

Wibbs

:)

can you not fix it yourself?

Alex Mitan

@trogdor... does that system seem alright to you?

Miniman

I'm not even sure it can be fixed. But the OP has made it clear they're not interested, so I'm giving up.

Alex Mitan

14:08

The armour system above

Wibbs

@Miniman Ah, fair enough

Stubborn OPs for the win \o/

Alex Mitan

I like the idea of giving some numbers to Fate combat while still being able to forget all about them when it gets really interesting

I can see the players try to bypass an enemy's armour by doing more than just attacking them head-on, which might be a reflex they have from other games

trogdor

14:21

@AlexMitan I am not entirely sure

it seems like it would at least need to be play tested to some degree to determine.

saying yes or no right now would be entirely irresponsible of me.

also, I gotta go to bed now

Alex Mitan

Alright, good night!

Alex Mitan

14:52

Why do they call Super games "Four-colour" anyway?

Pixie

15:04

@AlexMitan Four color refers to the four colors used to print old comics. It was also the name of a specific anthology.

Alex Mitan

Oooh, okay... thank you very much!

I'm finally at peace

Pixie

Not sure to what extent the named anthology has to do with the super hero classification as it wasn't super heroes to my knowledge. It was a very long-running and well-known anthology though. My guess is that the term applied to super heroes is just a reference to the ink and not the anthology.

Alex Mitan

Yeah, it'd make sense.. I googled before but found nothing

Now, it seems rather clever really

Zachiel

CMYK

I think I have the 4 colors antology as well

Pixie

15:32

CMYK is still pretty common in printing. There are alternatives, like spot color, but CMYK is economical when you need a variety of colors.

Alex Mitan

I did a quiz and the things I got recommended are, in order, Amber, Rifts, Shadowrun,Unknown Armies

I know about Amber and Shadowrun.. but what's with Rifts, what's that like?

Oh, nevermind, I'm reading about it

Ok - is looking at a game's character sheets a good or a bad way to gauge their rule-heaviness?

Zachiel

usually good

Alex Mitan

Character sheets and some mob sheets too

Decent, right?

Zachiel

The more the numbers, the higher the heaviness, usually. Especially if they're set in tables where you sum several togheter to get final values.

Shalvenay

@Polyducks -- my thing is that they should have used the term "deflagration" instead, as that's an accurate portrayal of what the spell generates

Alex Mitan

15:49

I've had someone mock me for saying Fate is a rather rules-light game... That person was being a [snip], but am I wrong anyway?

Zachiel

Well, it's more rules than I could bother to learn so he's probably right.

Alex Mitan

...But it doesn't feel like many rules at all.. how could it be heavy?

In essence, it's a couple of elements interacting

The rolls are mechanically similar, you can bring no more than 4 dice for any group, and that's what'll keep being used forever, unless you're Thomas Edison or something

Numbers average on 0, and they almost never go past 10..

Shalvenay

@AlexMitan -- Fate is rules-light, its just that the rules it does have have a very high degree of generality

Zachiel

How many pages is Fate long, excluding examples?

Alex Mitan

@Shalvenay Well, sure, but that seems like a thing to further its approachability... nobody can say "I don't like Fantasy, so Fate isn't for me"

@Zachiel I've seen the rules be compacted on two A4 pages

Shalvenay

15:55

@Zachiel -- Core or Accelerated? the latter's oh, under a dozen I bet

and that's just stripping the examples out, leaving most of the discussion text intact

Alex Mitan

The rulebooks were such a sweet read, with all the examples... even examples of players breaking the GM's storyline and such

Zachiel

Ouch. Ouch ouch ouch.

Shalvenay

you can squeeze it down much more if you want a pure cheatsheet as @AlexMitan mentioned

Alex Mitan

Yeah, what's huge about Core is "Ok, here's every skill in the book and how it interacts with each of the 4 actions"

Most of which you're allowed to disagree with

And making Skills up is encouraged too

Zachiel

I had to put some cream on my face and I used mom's circlet to keep my hair back. Without me realizing, the thing's ends were pushing into the flesh right behind my ears (where googles start curving down. I moved it away. Ouch.

a computing pun

15:58

I wouldn't call Fate rules-heavy or rules-light, but only because they're horribly dilute terms?

Alex Mitan

Take the detailed skill suggestions out of Core, and it deflates to a kind of different FAE

a computing pun

like, it's pretty rules-light compared to D&D 3.5, but it's pretty heavyweight compared to Everyone Is John.

Alex Mitan

Wait, but is approachability considered to be the same as lightness?

Zachiel

I see. I guess I let all this talk about two or three different mechanical ways to model things as too varied.

a computing pun

not necessarily? things considered light tend to be more approachable, but... maybe?

Zachiel

16:00

@AlexMitan theoretically, no. But you never know what people really mean unless you inquire.

Pixie

16:15

What constitutes rules-light or rules-heavy varies depending on whom you ask. These terms are not well-defined. Personally, I would call Fate lighter, but it's no Roll For Shoes. If that's what people are thinking of when they say rules light, Fate is definitely not it.

Shalvenay

yeah, it's a spectrum really

user20683

Wushu is pretty much the far end of rules light for me

user20683

Gurps or Herosystem is probably my bar for the other end

Zachiel

Is it me or there's new people popping out from nowhere?

BESW

My Life With Master is pretty light, but not very approachable at all.

user20683

16:23

@Zachiel I'm not new, just infrequent

Alex Mitan

@BESW How so?

Zachiel

@WorldEngineer Being very infrequent myself, as of late, I have really no idea about people being new or not ;)

Pixie

Maid is probably my favorite rules light game. :P At some point I may go back to trying to hack it to do something besidse zany authority/subordinate hijinks as it's so easy to pick up. Yaruki Zero does have a magical item shop version out, and I've seen another hack that's free... I think as a school setting.

Alex Mitan

Any links?

Pixie

@AlexMitan Maid RPG (whose setting is extremely YMMV), Retail Magic, High School RPG.

My cheatsheet for Maid is less than 2 pages in size 11 Arial and with no columns or other formatting. :P

Additionally, the game makes heavy use of random tables. They're optional, but they allow you to roll pretty much everything about your characters, setting, and scenario and just start playing. This isn't really something that could work for anything but a somewhat narrowly-defined setting, but I like it.

Alex Mitan

16:42

Hah, what a time to be alive. "Your master is a kind teenager who lives in the mansion alone, but is a bit of a train otaku. He is also a cursed werewolf. With amnesia."

Pixie

@AlexMitan Yep. That is exactly the kind of character that character generation gives you. :P

user20683

@AlexMitan Sounds like Werewolf: The Anime to me

BESW

@AlexMitan It's got a very small set of rules without many moving parts, and its concept is easily understood. But it's designed to be emotionally challenging for the players, and the mechanics are so small and so inflexible that sometimes it's difficult to frame the action within them... yet the system insists that you do.

It's a simple game to learn, and a VERY challenging, draining game to play.

Grubermensch

16:57

I think the classic example of a game that shows "rules-light" and "approachable" are not the same would be Go.

Alex Mitan

Ah, yeah, oh my god

Okay, fair point, I have a lot of experience with board games

I raised an eyebrow when they called Go "heavy" on boardgamegeek though

but I didn't disagree

"B-but I understand the two rules of the game, why do I never win" - my repeatedly short-lived, and often-self-resurrecting Go career

Pixie

@WorldEngineer Thinking back, the cast of my last Maid game was a rainbow-haired ultimate maid robot, a were-tiger who was the master's childhood friend (but only in it for the money), a secretly cold-blooded assassin whose actual dream was always to be a maid, and a "butler" who was just our barbarian ported from Pathfinder.

user20683

@Pixie that sounds almost as weird as my first 3.5 party

Alex Mitan

My biggest confusion about Fate for now... Compels seem like a slow, and rather heavy way to get Fate points... I can't imagine they account for all FP expenditure from the players... their enemies/GM invoking their aspects flatly seems like a much quicker way to get FP back... what would you say is the % of gaining points in your games?
Also, when the GM invokes the environment against the players... do they get the points still?

user20683

Goliath Druid, Sunbathing Dwarven Cleric of Pelor, Half-Ogre Psychic Warrior, Insectile Human Bard, and a Pixie Rogue

user20683

17:07

I've become considerably more conservative about allowed options

Zachiel

Sunbathing?

user20683

@Zachiel Pelor is Greyhawk's Sun God

Zachiel

@WorldEngineer I figured that was included in the "of Pelor" part.

Pixie

@WorldEngineer This is the norm for Maid. 3/4 characters were rolled and run with. :P I give people the option to decide what they want, but upon learning that random generation is the default character creation method, most become dedicated to seeing that through.

@WorldEngineer Hah. Sounds fun to me.

user20683

@Pixie too much chaos for my taste

user20683

17:11

then again, it was 10 years ago

Pixie

@WorldEngineer I can understand that too, especially in 3.5. It'd likely be way too much for me to keep track of.

user20683

@Pixie too much dependency on 3.0 material started unbalance things

Pixie

@WorldEngineer Ooooh, yeah. I wouldn't have so much fun after all.

user20683

and I was getting into Eberron

user20683

so the flavor of what I wanted to do clashed with the group and things ended naturally anyway

Pixie

17:12

Now in Fate, I'd love to see such a party. :P

user20683

the raging WoW addiction in response to my first serious relationship's end didn't help

user20683

Though, I'd be entirely okay running a mechanically toned down version of that party in Planescape

user20683

I quit D&D for Shadowrun and other things (I tried Cthulhutech, that was a f***ing mess)

Pixie

One of my very problems with 3.5 is I like weird stuff, and the weird stuff can be hard to manage.

Alex Mitan

@Pixie I already have a pyromaniac elven rogue-mage, an abomination/oozeman absorbing traits, both abilities and appearance, from corpses, and a faceless warlock whose relationship with his crablike familiar is questionable at best, doom-foretelling at worst

and this is just prep, since I can't play for a month, and this all arose just because I can't shut up about Fate

user20683

17:15

@Pixie my problem with 3.5 was that everything needed to be stated somehow

Pixie

@AlexMitan Nice! Hah, my Pathfinder witch had a crab familiar she adored.

user20683

my favorite character so far was a Changeling Artificer who was a siege engineer in the war

user20683

he liked to leave fake homunculuses lying around, stuffed to the gills with horrible poisons or explosives

Zachiel

@Pixie Or be suboptimal.

Pixie

@Zachiel That too.

user20683

17:18

the suboptimality problem drove me crazy

user20683

cool things should be reasonably decent

user20683

at the very minimum

Zachiel

Reasonably decent is never enough.

user20683

@Zachiel in 3.5 most definitely

user20683

5e seems better about things in that regard. Still some rough spots but the mentality is different

Zachiel

17:20

The WYSIWYS is why I like Legend. "Is it cool? It's also good." But monsters have the 3.5e problem: they each have a bunch of different things they can do that the DM has to keep track of.

user20683

@Zachiel 5e tends to have pretty focused monsters

Pixie

The desire to play something interesting or flavorful can all too often put you at odds with the ability to play something effective. I'm happy to make some concessions since RP is important to me, but it's not ideal.

Alex Mitan

One complaint I have about D&D, and I won't sink into it, but one complaint I have is that players have to wait to get their character to be like what they want.. e.g. "You can't do that until lvl x"

which can be serious stuff like "You don't get a familiar till lvl 3"

user20683

I'd let them have a pet

user20683

it's not a "familiar" per se, really a "familiar in training"

Alex Mitan

17:24

Sure, you can adapt around it, but it reminds me of the oberoni fallacy... we're playing RPGs, most of the charm of the genre lies around the fact that yes, you can, to a great extent, do whatever you want

Pixie

@AlexMitan Yeah, I usually play casters and often find myself kind of bored until level 5 or so.

That said, I still enjoy playing Pathfinder, particularly with people who feel the same way about its limitations.

Alex Mitan

@Pixie, what system do you play the most?

Pixie

@AlexMitan I actually freeform RP the most. I've had the most tabletop experience playing Pathfinder and Maid.

user20683

Shadowrun is my go-to outside of D20

Grubermensch

@AlexMitan Compels and hostile invokes are two different techniques for providing narrative opposition, used in different circumstances. If your game is conflict-heavy, you'll have more hostile invokes. If it's more of an interior character drama, you'll have more compels. Another distinction is that hostile invokes draw from a limited FP pool, while compels are bottomless.

user20683

17:26

but I also come from a wargaming background

Pixie

I very much want to get into Fate but not enough opportunities are presenting themselves. :P

Grubermensch

...why is markdown not succeed?!

Pixie

@Grubermensch Markdown has lost its fighting spirit.

user20683

@Grubermensch permission to fix?

Grubermensch

yes please

Pixie

17:28

But I think the problem might be line breaks?

I've had that cause issues before.

Grubermensch

:(

user20683

@Grubermensch the message is too long

Grubermensch

@AlexMitan Your second question has been asked here.

user20683

the line break causes it to think it isn't but then it is

Grubermensch

@World can you delete the second part then

user20683

17:29

so it goes weird

Alex Mitan

@Grubermensch What about my first question though? </3

user20683

@Grubermensch done

Alex Mitan

Wait

I missed some chat

Grubermensch

@World thanks

Alex Mitan

Oooo, @Grubermensch, so if someone says I'm under a [Large Chandelier], and invoke it with a fate point to shoot it down, having it fall on me, I get a point at the end?

Grubermensch

17:32

@AlexMitan Nope, that would be a narrative fact. No reason to invoke it.

If you were under a [Bloodthirsty Chandelier], on the other hand...

Alex Mitan

No, but they invoke it and get a +2 to damage

the aspect is already there

is what I meant

Grubermensch

And what I meant is that's not really Aspect-worthy

Pixie

The aspect can be invoked, but that doesn't earn you points.

Alex Mitan

I know, I know, I'm just giving an example... why does it matter if they take advantage of the [Chandelier] or my [Indomitable Hangover]? Mechanically the effect is the same

with a fate point, for +2?

Grubermensch

Aspects should in general feel special. Not everyone owes a [Blood Debt to the Vulcan Mob], not every room is [On Fire], not all swords were [Forged from the Cinders of a Dying Star].

Alex Mitan

17:37

Thanks, I'm aware, but I just gave a simple example for the game mechanics

Grubermensch

Sure, but in that case, as the linked question was answered, it's an aspect on the environment.

Alex Mitan

If an aspect is invoked to my detriment, why does it matter if the aspect is attached to me or the place we're in?

Grubermensch

Because you are not the place you are in (usually).

The fate point goes to the environment, which just sort of absorbs it into its infinite pile of fate points.

Alex Mitan

Hah, yeah, I get it.. but it's still "story that goes badly for me"..

The GM could be very [snippy] then, only invoking environmental aspects to avoid giving players FP...

Grubermensch

What you are doing is compelling the environment to do something it wasn't normally going to do. It also happens to turn out badly for you, but that's life.

Pixie

17:39

You don't get fate points just because something went badly for you, you get fate points for orchestrating or accepting others' orchestrations to something directly related to the important things about your character (at least as I interpret it).

Alex Mitan

I don't want to sound stubborn, by the way, I just feel I still need to understand this better

Grubermensch

@AlexMitan Well, they could. But that would be Doing It Wrong.

Fate points are compensation for relenquishing narrative control.

2

In the chandelier example, who lost narrative control? The GM-Environment, not the player. The player expressed narrative control.

Pixie

@Grubermensch Aha, this makes sense.

Alex Mitan

Hm, okay... I need to screencap this to get it through my head

Well not really to get it through my head, but rather have it as a definitive answer...thank you very much, @Grubermensch :)

It was super fuzzy before

Grubermensch

You're welcome

Alex Mitan

17:43

Can I write up a short example for you to give me a final yes/no to see if I got it?

Grubermensch

In most RPGs, winning is about dominating the outcome. In Fate winning is about dominating the process.

@AlexMitan Sure

Alex Mitan

1) Someone invokes [Bloodthirsty Chandelier] and adds +2 to their stress with a fate point, saying that the crossbow bolt they fire tears the chain apart, and the blunt trauma of it is what really hurts my character. Why? Because fun. The chandelier aspect probably changes, and the fate point dissolves.

And 2)

2) They Create an Advantage successfully to cut down the [Bloodthirsty Chandelier], trapping me. The aspect gets removed, and something like [Victim of the Bloodthirsty Chandelier] gets attached to me with a free invoke. I can't move until I remove this, and I don't. On their next turn, they fire a crossbow bolt at me, using both the free invoke and a fate point on my aspect, for a +4 to stress. I get the point at the end of the scene.

Correct?

Pixie

Then again, I'm reading the SRD, and it does note here that characters affected by situation compels get points, and it gives some examples. These are considerably more dramatic than the mere presence of a chandelier, which I don't think I'd make an aspect unless it were super important.

lisardggY

Yo yo.

Grubermensch

Yep. Though I'd point out that giving the chandelier an aspect means that you're treating in like a character in some sense, so you'd probably want to describe more agency (e.g. the chandelier, wanting to totally murderize you, sways into the path of the shot, and then drops on you, shattering itself in the process).

Alex Mitan

17:51

Okay, okay, normally I wouldn't make every piece of furniture an aspect, I get it, I just wanted to give a very cliché, simple example

@Pixie Hm, yeah, but those are still narrative compels, no dice involved... I think a fair thing to say is, if no dice are rolled, it's probably a compel where somebody gets a Fate Point

Grubermensch

@Pixie I think this is again an example of why it's better to judge whether to give points based on the narrative control dynamics, rather than hard and fast rules. It's pretty obvious there that the GM is taking narrative control from the player by forcing a complication.

Pixie

@Grubermensch Yeah, I agree.

Grubermensch

@AlexMitan Oh wait. I just noticed something there. You can't invoke the same aspect twice in an exchange, so they couldn't pull 4 shifts out of that.

There's some specific exception to that, but I can't remember what it was...

Alex Mitan

@Grubermensch Free invokes stack with FP invokes, but you can't spend multiple FP on one aspect

Zird and Cynere want to set Landon up for an extremely big hit on Tremendor, the much-feared giant of the Northern Wastes.

Both Cynere and Zird roll to create an advantage on their turns, resulting in three free invocations on a Flashy Distraction they make from Zird’s magical fireworks (which succeeded to create the advantage) and Cynere’s glancing hits (which succeeded with style to add two more free invocations).

They pass those to Landon, and on his turn, he uses them all for a gigantic +6 to his attack.

Grubermensch

Ah then carry on.

Alex Mitan

17:59

SRD citation

Pixie

Now I sort of want to do a haunted house with an actual bloodthirsty chandelier. :P

I'm fond of horror in which the setting itself is the enemy, which I think would work extremely well in Fate.

Alex Mitan

Yeah! I love the SRD examples... like the fiery death bolt turret thingy

If anyone ever GMs a Fate game on here, I'd love to play or at least watch...

lisardggY

18:19

Fate is fun, I agree. Mainly, for me, because the system downplays the tactical importance of choices, letting choices that are narratively right be both cool and effective.

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