TRPG General Chat

Pixie

00:22

Oh, but now that I think about it, I should warn about looking up lyrics for that one. They're bloody. P: I forgot it was a Kikuo-P song.

doppelgreener

@Pixie I'll listen to this one. And yes. UK Owen and Bad Apple are both great. :D

Pixie

@doppelgreener Yus, UN Owen Was Her is great. And Marisa Stole the Precious Thing. xD But there is a whole world of lyrical and instrumental arrangements of Touhou music and it is all so good.

doppelgreener

@Pixie I see what you mean about the chorus, wow :D

That song was lovely.

@Pixie I haven't heard of that Marisa one. :D

I will listen to it after this Hatsune Miku one that came up in autoplay after that Kikuo-P song.

@Pixie is.... is this the song? :O

Pixie

@doppelgreener That's another Kikuo-P song. I will warn you before you tread too deep into them, the lyrics really are messed up. Love Me, Love Me is comparably mild, though. And yep, that's the Marisa song I mean. IT'S SO CUTE.

doppelgreener

IT IS.

Meanwhile parts of it remind me of the Ronald McDonald UK Owen Was Her remix. XD

Pixie

00:35

Haha, yes.

doppelgreener

(a part somewhere in the middle specifically)

I like that you know exactly what I'm referring to.

Pixie

My deep knowledge of useless subjects strikes again.

doppelgreener

(ง ͠° ͟ل͜ ͡°)ง

this Marisa song hits adorableness critical mass around 1m through to 1m30s.

Pixie

"Why don't I miss you a lot, forever?" is probably one of my favorite lines in anything ever.

doppelgreener

Is that one of the lyrics in this? (I haven't looked them up)

Pixie

00:42

This is a subbed one. It's one of the few English lines though.

Oh, haha, same one as you linked.

doppelgreener

Oh! So is the one I linked, I didn't realise.

Yeah. I just haven't been watching the videos. :D

Pixie

It's even cuter with the translation. xD

Sandwich

Hey Doppel

Its actually really easy to play the squid sisters song on piano

Because its a Japanese based song

All of the keys are sharps or flats

So you have about twenty keys to work with when playing it

doppelgreener

@Sandwich say what :O

Sandwich

Yeah no joke

It's ezpz

doppelgreener

00:50

is... is this how japanese music usually works?

Sandwich

Yes

doppelgreener

wow

Sandwich

Japanese music normally is only played on sharps and flats

Here let me get the synesthesia notes

Splatoon: Final Boss (Squid Sisters Ver.) on Synthesia

►

Theres like ONE off key note in that whole song

doppelgreener

Wow.

Sandwich

The one off key note in the green side is a wrong note

doppelgreener

00:54

That explains a lot about that song and also Japanese music in general.

Sandwich

The one off key blue note is the correct note

doppelgreener

But also I'm astounded that two entirely separate musical cultures and sets of musical theory evolved, one of them defining sharps and flats and other notes and preferring the others, the other also defining the notes that are sharps and flats and preferring those.

Sandwich

I believe that was because of the japanese instruments personally

doppelgreener

When I learned Japanese musical culture was different, I thought they had an entirely different musical scale. Hearing they have one that defines some of the same stuff but just uses it almost to the inverse of how we use it is surprising!

Sandwich

The Koto, and the Shamisen

Pixie

01:50

Hmm. We've got our necromancer who just likes to talk to ghosts, and we're trying to think of how to handle that in Fate. I can't really do a main site question because I don't know exactly what he wants yet, still trying to suss that out. But is there any reason why Contacts shouldn't just let him talk to ghosts with a Contacts roll if his aspect says he's a necromancer? Does it need to be a stunt like he's thinking?

I know things like "need" are dependent upon what is being done with it, exactly, but if anyone has any experience with this sort of thing, that would be helpful.

doppelgreener

@Pixie That sounds fine and fantastic.

Depending on what he wants out of ghosts though affects how you model it.

Pixie

I just feel like "knows some guy" and "conjures some ghost" are pretty similar mechanically here. xD

Unless he wants to be able to use them offensively at any point.

doppelgreener

Here's an aspect Stellata has that seems relevant:

> A small tome for an address book: When you arrive in a new town, city, port, or other sizable population center, you may roll Contacts against a difficulty of Great (+4). On a tie or better, write down an aspect that represents a friendly contact you have there. On a success, the aspect has one free invocation; on a success with style, two free invocations.
You can invoke this aspect to have your friend take one risk on your behalf—fight for you, lie for you, and the like. When you spend a fate point to invoke this aspect, it goes away at the end of the scene, and your friend is gone (lyi…

(The original name is "The social network", it's an ARRPG stunt.)

Pixie

Thanks, that may be useful!

doppelgreener

Do note that it takes a fate point invoke to make the contact need to lie low. That means the free invocations let you get more out of your contact before they have to disappear from the radar.

Pixie

01:59

I'm getting a bit more info!

> basic idea was "find ghosts, ask them 'does your ghost knowledge have things that could help us'"
like "did you see a guy go this way" or "do you remember how that door opens"

doppelgreener

Okay. So, I can see ghosts being an issue because ghosts see and know a lot and extend back through all of time and history really. Your science friend has a lot of contacts in the world of science, but you know a ghost.

It's like that "There's an app for that" joke, but it's "There's a ghost for that".

Which could be really cool and fun or could be marginalising. "Let me see what I can summon up," says Daryl the ghost summoner for the four millionth time.

Pixie

Yeah, true, there may be some scope issues there.

Sandwich

All my contacts would be prostitutes if I played Fate

They know the most things

doppelgreener

They don't know how to calibrate a fusion reactor, most of the time.

which can be important depending on what your stories are about XD

Sandwich

That depends on whether or not they've slept with a particle physicist

doppelgreener

02:04

but a strumpet would be a great way to keep in touch with on-the-street knowledge.

Sandwich

Prostitutes learn via osmosis

doppelgreener

@Sandwich Are you suggesting a prostitute absorbs peoples' knowledge via sexual osmosis?

oh dear XD

Sandwich

Yes I just said that

doppelgreener

@Pixie I am not sure precisely how you'd resolve this. But like... in our game, we have Jessie Farman who just decided she was going to rewind time in a locale and give us a view way into the past. That's awesome and incredibly powerful. It's also fine, because it doesn't step on anyone's toes - she solves problems we can't solve otherwise, but she isn't marginalising anyone.

Sandwich

They're superherooooes

doppelgreener

02:08

Also, the time gun's a prototype and very prone to malfunction, so a compel that makes everything go horribly wrong could be around the corner any time she tries to do something useful with it.

Your necromancer's got a great access to information past and present, and as long as there's a ghost nearby who's reliable and helpful, he can learn mostly anything they know. That could be fantastic. Or it could marginalise other people, which is the only real issue.

(Also, the possibility of summoning up an angry or restless ghost, or a ghost who's distinctly unhelpful, or a doctor who seems to know what they're doing but all their medicinal knowledge was 11th century, or a crack physicist who thought he was on the cutting edge and is certain in his since-disproved theories... are all great compel opportunities to make things go wrong.)

Pixie

Yeah. If no one else wants to do that sort of thing and everybody finds it useful and feels that it contributes to their experience, I wouldn't worry about it. Unfortunately, I don't know how to predict that yet. I do know that no one in this group tries to abuse things like this.

doppelgreener

Yeah. Try it out.

Pixie

He's also introduced a complicating factor of his own: "you can't just call a ghost up, if you want a ghost who knows a specific thing you have to locate and reach that specific ghost's place of haunting." So if you want a ghost who knows stuff about the spooky cave in the wilderness, it's probably not Brenda from downtown who hangs out in the old cemetery, who is just going to be confused because she'd never been there in her life.

doppelgreener

That sounds reasonable.

I don't know if this is your group's habit, but in the group BESW, trogdor and I are in, we try to make time after a game concludes to discuss the game, how we felt about it, talk about what went well and what didn't, where it might go from here, offer suggestions and so on.

A similar thing would be worthwhile after your Fate session, and would provide an opportunity to also reflect on any ghost business that happened in that session.

Pixie

I usually ask for thoughts about what worked and what didn't after I run something. I don't always get them, but I ask. xD

Magician

02:36

@doppelgreener you've sent me an invite! And I've sent one back! \o/

It could have been lying there for a couple of days, there's unfortunately no notification about these things, you have to check the messages tab :(

Sandwich

02:59

Quick @doppelgreener Teach me fate

How many dice do I need

Magician

4

Sandwich

Those funny D6s with the pluses on them?

Iron Heart

Not necessarily.

Miniman

@Sandwich Any d6s will work if you don't want to buy something.

Or any d3s, for that matter.

Sandwich

Whats the difference between the pluses and the minuses

What do they mean

Iron Heart

03:02

1-2 count as -1, 3-4 count as 0, 5-6 count as +1.

Sandwich

Succeed / Fail?

Based on the die structure I guess the + and the - would cancel each other out

So if you had to roll three and you got +. +. and -. You'd have a +1 or something?

Shalvenay

yep

doppelgreener

@Magician just last night sent it

Shalvenay

FATE dice are normally rolled in groups of 4

(a 4dF in dice notation)

Sandwich

What happens if you roll 4 +'s

doppelgreener

03:03

@Sandwich those are called fudge dice

Sandwich

Does the universe explode

Shalvenay

well, fudge dice :)

nah, you just get +4

Sandwich

What if I was rolling to make the universe explode

doppelgreener

@Sandwich you feel awesome and get a +4. Fate doesn't have a concept of critical success.

@Sandwich this is not roll for shoes XD

Miniman

@Sandwich Note that this should happen reasonably often.

Sandwich

03:05

So are there skills, skill points, attributes, feats, classes, equipment, races, or anything of the sort in fate

doppelgreener

Well a roll of raw ++++ isn't common!

BESW

What kind of game is Fate?

Jul 24 '13 at 7:43, 22 minutes total – 43 messages, 5 users, 0 stars

Bookmarked Aug 26 '13 at 15:00 by BESW

Shalvenay

FATE uses a much more...generic conflict resolution system

doppelgreener

@Sandwich fate-srd.com

BESW

If you really want your questions answered, try to give people time to answer them before asking another one.

Sandwich

03:07

Okay

Miniman

@doppelgreener 1/81 - given that it's the only roll you make, you should see it a fair bit.

doppelgreener

@Miniman one in 81 rolls isn't "a fair bit"!

Sandwich

So Aspects are like PC Gen Traits and Skills are skills

doppelgreener

@Sandwich i have never used PC gen. Fate's skills are not a direct analogy to D&D's skills.

Miniman

@doppelgreener Yeah, but how many rolls do you make per session?

doppelgreener

03:08

@Miniman usually less than 81. last session I got - - - - once, and + + + + twice, which was astounding. Most sessions I go without seeing either one.

BESW

The point of the +/0/- spread on 4dF is that you get a really strong bell curve toward neutral outcomes. This lets your modifiers (skills, stunts, invokes) be numerically small but still significantly affect the outcome of your rolls.

Sandwich

I see

So its the opposite of maid

doppelgreener

(this is the Fudge dice bell curve)

Shalvenay

@BESW -- yeah. the bell curve on 4dF is very nice, it's similar to rolling 3d6 for stat checks in lieu of a d20 in the D&D world

BESW

Means that you can have a skill spread of just +0 to +3 and still feel like your highest-ranked skill makes you awesome at doing that thing.

doppelgreener

03:09

@BESW yep :D

Sandwich

Where maid is exponential based on your stat, this is a linear scale based on your skill total

With an average +2/-2 per roll

BESW

Success is determined by adding the sum of your 4dF roll, your skill rank, and any modifiers from stunts, teamwork, or invokes--then comparing that sum to a target number.

The four outcomes are failure; tie (which usually means success at cost); success; and success with style (3 or more over the target number).

Sandwich

Is there any combat, and if so is it resolved in the same fashion with opposed rolls or something?

BESW

Conflict of every sort--physical, social, mental, economic--uses the same sets of rules.

There are four basic kinds "levels" of conflict: a single opposed roll; a challenge where you roll multiple times to see how well you do at a thing; a contest where multiple characters compete to achieve their opposing goals first; and a conflict which plays out similarly to "traditional" RPG combat.

Shalvenay

yeah -- the FATE ruleset is designed to be extremely flexible -- I personally like what I've seen of it so far, although I haven't come close to exploring it fully

the main issue I have is tying it all together, but that's because I don't understand drama very well at all

BESW

03:14

Target numbers for rolls are determined by the GM if the opposition is passive, otherwise it's an opposed roll.

Sandwich

So if it were like an archery contest and there were three targets at different ranges, with skill ranges of 3, 5, and 7 to hit the bullseye at, each would roll and the one who met the most challenges wins

7 being stupid impossible and 3 being ezpz

BESW

That'd be a contest, and the first to get three successes would win.

Sandwich

Alright that doesn't sound too bad

BESW

Success with style gives two successes in a contest, and a tie for highest on a roll would mean that instead something about the contest's context changes--maybe it starts raining, or the king shows up to watch.

Sandwich

doppelgreener

03:16

@Sandwich WHAT

BESW

@doppelgreener I dunno, I like it.

Sandwich

Someone failed their skill challenge

Pixie

I cannot stop laughing at this. Every time I look at it. Every single time.

BESW

yeah, that could be seen as a challenge where they succeeded at Resources (to have the equipment) and Contacts (to get the contract) but failed at Lore (to get it right).

Sandwich

Well at least they didn't switch his tail and his nose

BESW

03:20

(Challenges aren't about pass/fail; they're about seeing what parts of a single task you did well, and which you didn't do so well. You can successfully crack a safe deposit box but still set off the alarm... or get the wrong box... or accidentally incinerate its contents...)

Sandwich

It sounds very narrative driven and fun

doppelgreener

It is.

Sandwich

Where do I sign up

doppelgreener

One thing Fate does is that it does away with meaningless rolls entirely.

Sandwich

:D

BESW

03:25

Then aspects are pithy statements about the things about your character that you want to be important to the story. They should cover a spread of "helpful" and "obstructive" implications, often within the same aspect.

doppelgreener

If failure isn't uninteresting, no roll is made. If the event isn't engaging enough to roll for, no roll is made. Whenever a roll is made, somehow the story is changing whether it succeeds or fails, and something is moving forward.

BESW

You get Fate points when your aspects (and other things, but mostly your aspects) create complication and drama, and you spend them to get bonuses and re-rolls on skill checks and to declare useful story details.

doppelgreener

The only result that doesn't produce a change in the story is when you attack someone, and they defend by precisely either +1 or +2. Anything else changes stress, creates aspects, or creates boosts or free invocations.

Shalvenay

@BESW -- yeah, my problem is that I'm able to engineer around downsides rather too well instead of leaving them in for story value

BESW

@Shalvenay Aye, it requires a change in attitude--the idea that downsides are fun.

Sandwich

03:28

Narratively a story is more interesting if the main character has to face challenges and fails

Because it makes it easier to relate to the character

Since no one is perfect

"Nobody's Perfect"

Shalvenay

yeah, my problem is that my failure model is not tuned for narrative work

BESW

Fate does well to incentivise complications and drama: by giving you Fate points when your character's life gets harder, you're rewarded for seeking that kind of story out and you're given the tools to overcome obstacles later on.

Shalvenay

the types of failures my failure models generate don't fit well with the expectations of most narratives

BESW

The system is designed to get players to collaborate in order to make their characters' lives more dramatic and complicated.

doppelgreener

And conspire against their characters.

Shalvenay

03:30

I think it's largely because I tend to generate systems failures, instead of human failures

Sandwich

Sounds right @Shalvenay

Sounds like you're thinking too much about the game system and not enough about the characters

Shalvenay

@Sandwich -- not the game system

doppelgreener

@Sandwich Yes. Pretty much. And it makes it safe for things to go disastrously wrong. In D&D, if you fail at things, the default is that you just outright lose, and it sucks, and that's it, and there's nothing else. In Fate, you're rewarded with awesome story, or fate points, or so on.

Sandwich

Before you roll do you think about what would happen if a character decided to make a roll and fail? Would it be interesting if that character failed? Would something bad happen or would there be a negative consequence?

doppelgreener

And in combat, there are mechanics to encourage pulling out before you lose completely: conceding. You even get fate points for it, more depending on how badly you got beaten!

BESW

03:32

@Sandwich If only success or failure is interesting, Fate feels you shouldn't roll and instead just go with the interesting one.

(And hand out Fate points if failure is really interesting.)

Shalvenay

when I say systems failures, I'm speaking from a simulationist PoV -- think of the difference between a Hollywood airplane movie type drama and how routine-looking a skilled flight crew can make a RL emergency

doppelgreener

@Sandwich Yes, I think about that every time before I make a roll. "Is success and failure going to be interesting here?" If yes, I pick up the dice or suggest someone else does.

Sandwich

Have you seen the movie Airplane @Shalvenay?

That seems to me like it'd be grounded in FATE as a system

Shalvenay

@Sandwich -- no

chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/19850861#19850861 << for an example of what I'm talking about with the latter

Sandwich

Alright, you should go watch Airplane then

It's awesome you'll love it

BESW

03:34

I suspect it's more of an RFS sort of story. Fate is designed for crisis/victory pacing in stories about PCs who are competent, proactive, and dramatic.

Sandwich

Another movie that seems like FATE: Some like it Hot

BESW

Fate's a system for Star Wars, Die Hard, and Indiana Jones.

Shalvenay

@Sandwich -- I probably couldn't watch it

@BESW -- save for the part in Die Hard where the terrorists started mucking with the ILS

Sandwich

Why? They're both interesting and hillarious

Alright alright

The Shawshank Redemption?

Have you seen that?

Shalvenay

they'd need to have a terrorist on the flightline with heavy equipment to do that :P as you have to physically alter the glideslope antenna to do what they did

no

Sandwich

03:36

Jeez.

Shalvenay

@Sandwich -- I basically would be the check airman in the cockpit flunking the flight crew on their checkride when it came to Airplane

Sandwich

Or the fact that they served chicken and fish on the plane

And everyone who ate the fish is experiencing symptoms

And then they start listing off symptoms and as they list them off the pilot is experiencing them

Shalvenay

yeah, pilot incap happens. it's why you have two guys on the flight deck, not a guy and a dog :P

(well guys/gals :)

Sandwich

Then they have to inflate an auto pilot to fly the plane

But then the Auto pilot starts deflating so the stewardess has to reinflate it from a valve below deck

Airplane is just non-stop comedy

Shalvenay

@Sandwich -- did you see the link I posted btw?

Sandwich

03:39

Its gold

Shalvenay

the inflatable A/P is a pretty good one, reminds me of the ballast-block backseaters the Navy had on some of their planes because otherwise the ejection seats wouldn't do their job properly as they were hardwired to fire in a set sequence

(i.e. when that seat was otherwise unoccupied)

Sandwich

You should watch those three movies though

Some like it hot is about two guys who play instruments who witness the mob committing a crime so they dress as women and hop on a bus to escape

I wont spoil the ending but its funny

Easily in my top 5 movies

Shawshank redemption is about a banker who gets accused of murdering his wife and sentenced to life in prison

That's actually all I can tell you without spoiling it

But its my favorite movie

Yeah I did @Shalvenay

Shalvenay

yeah, I think what happens is that my sim-sense winds up undermining many of the conceits that are commonly relied upon in fiction

Sandwich

If you don't laugh during Airplane I'll eat my Nike's

doppelgreener

@Sandwich Don't do that, they're probably good shoes and you'll probably get indigestion.

Sandwich

03:45

I haven't met a person who didn't laugh at some point during Airplane

BESW

@Sandwich You're pushing kinda hard. Shalv's made it clear that he's not interested in a goofy send-up of his own profession.

Sandwich

I've mentioned three movies, just because he might not like one doesn't mean he wont like one of the other two non-airplane related movies

Shalvenay

@BESW -- its not my profession even -- and yes, I agree that the inflatable A/P's a pretty decent one. it'd make a good gag in a movie that didn't otherwise fall for all the Hollywood tropes

@Sandwich -- SHawshank Redemption doesn't sound too bad

Sandwich

It has Morgan Freeman in it

As the Narrator

Of the whole movie

He also plays Red, Andy's best friend in prison

Shalvenay

@Sandwich -- let me put it this way -- I'm more interested in seeing competent characters juggling systems failures than I am in seeing people getting whacked with idiot balls out of the blue

doppelgreener

03:54

i don't know if that's an allusion to fate, 'cause fate doesn't have an idiot ball. (Unless you do compels strangely and decide to add one.)

Shalvenay

negative on the allusion to FATE

doppelgreener

okay.

Shalvenay

that's more of an allusion to what I consider bad writing form

putting a char out of their element is OK (see the RP I ran with Nyoze in the Back Room a couple weeks back)

Sandwich

Eskimo in a desert?

Shalvenay

making them into a quivering lump of flesh in a situation that they darn well should be able to handle, though -- that doesn't draw any style points from me

@Sandwich -- well, they do live in a desert :P

Sandwich

03:57

Their desert requires thick fur coats though :P

Shalvenay

(stop and think a minute about how dry arctic climes actually are)

doppelgreener

I'm not sure how severe it is, and I don't intend to make anyone self conscious about it, but I do not think there is a particularly tactful way to say this:

We just had a conversation about Shalvenay's issues with certain roleplaying paradigms that derailed and halted a previous conversation totally then went on to dominate the chat for a while.

Shalvenay

yeah, that should have been in NAB, in retrospect

I'm wondering why that didn't occur to me sooner, even.

Sandwich

Well everyone has hangups to be honest

doppelgreener

@Shalvenay I think you need to be strategic about pointing out the problems you face with certain RPG aspects. Doing this tends to derail the chat if anyone actually engages in it.

@Sandwich Conversations of this nature, specifically those involving Shalvenay, got banned from chat entirely a few months ago because they were repeatedly doing this.

Shalvenay

03:59

because had I thought of it before now, I'd have directed the conversation that way

Sandwich

Ah. I wasn't around a few months ago

I was around a couple months ago however

doppelgreener

@Sandwich The edict is here.

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener -- yeah, thinking about it more, I agree with you that I need a better strategy for attacking my drama/narrative issues

I've been flailing about for quite a while because it's been so hard to come to a good, shared understanding of the problem, even

@doppelgreener -- btw, I just came up with a compact expression of the Stormwind Fallacy: "The Stormwind Fallacy is that there is no in-character professional development for adventurers."

Miniman

@doppelgreener Those peculiar moments when looking at old chat logs - I have no idea why I said this or what it means.

@Shalvenay That's definitely not right.

doppelgreener

@Miniman This is because you were possessed at the time by mind control.

Shalvenay

04:05

@Miniman -- hrm, what am I missing then?

doppelgreener

@Shalvenay The compact expression is "you can't be an optimizer and also roleplay well." It does not preclude your character developing professionally in-character, it precludes being an optimizer who develops system mastery and so on.

Miniman

@Shalvenay Roleplaying your optimization is a possible solution to the Stormwind Fallacy, but an equally valid solution is for no mechanical concepts to ever be mentioned in character.

The whole point is that roleplaying and optimization are 2 entirely separate things, and the level to which you perform one does not have to influence the other.

doppelgreener

@Miniman There isn't a solution to the stormwind fallacy, it's a false idea (probably not a fallacy), it doesn't work and doesn't need solving :P

Shalvenay

@doppelgreener -- system mastery is how you map the notion of in-character professional development onto the mechanics of the game you're dealing with :)

doppelgreener

Actually i guess that is a fallacy.

Miniman

04:07

@doppelgreener Yeah, I didn't express that well.

Shalvenay

but, it's late, and I need to hit the sack

Miniman

@Shalvenay That doesn't really make a whole lot of sense. A D&D character saying "I'm going to practice and get better at intimidating people so that I can become a true master of the longsword" just sounds like an idiot.

Sandwich

What you gonna hit it with? groucho eyebrow raise, puffs cigar

@Miniman Just like climbing a pole and collecting an arrow to become a master chinese warrior? :P

doppelgreener

@Shalvenay that is not what system mastery is

As Lord Gareth describes it:

> System Mastery is the quality of understanding the strengths, weaknesses, and functions of an RPG system and its rules, and/or the ability to skillfully use those rules.

You can use system mastery to map in-character professional development to mechanics, but that is not what system mastery is.

Shalvenay

aaah, I see

Grubermensch

05:05

@Miniman Except, you know, in that you have finite time.

This is always what has irked me about the Stormwind "Fallacy", and why I contend that it is more true than fallacious.

Adeptus

@Grubermensch Optimization is mostly an "away-from-table" thing. You get your character optimal, then bring it to the table to actually play it. Unless your argument is that time spent mastering the rules could/should be spent mastering roleplaying. In which case, it could also be spent watching TV, or working. Different people have different amounts of free time & different priorities on how to spend it.

Grubermensch

@Adeptus Good roleplaying also involves a lot of away from table effort. Actually building a model of the character that can be played requires time spent brainstorming, writing, tweaking, dreaming, rewriting.

My criticism of Stormwind is that it rebuts an absolutist binary between optimization and roleplaying, but it does so in a way (and with a presentation style) that also seems to rebut a spectrum view of the two. It would pretend that there is not a trade-off in time investment.

This is often further reinforced by claims like the one you just made, that roleplaying requires no out-of-game time, which is a pretty frustrating dismissal to those of us who do make a significant investment into building the story away from the table.

BESW

My experience in D&D 3.5 and 4e was that the more time I spent working on NPC mechanics, the more prepared I was to RP them effectively at the table.

Grubermensch

05:21

@BESW There's also that aspect too, but I think it applies more to GMs (in that they have to deal with a rotating set of mechanics) than to individual players.

BESW

When I bring this up, I usually get a response that I'd be better at RP if I spent less time on the mechanics and dedicated that time to prepping RP exclusively--but whether true or not it's kinda ridiculous as a response, because it's just begging the question: my basic observation is that the more time I spend on the mechanics, the more my RP improves.

a computing pun

@Grubermensch I agree that sometimes (but strongly disagree that always) good roleplaying can involve working on one's character concept away from the table. But even then, "away-from-table" roleplaying and away-from-table optimisation are two quite different types of activities.

Miniman

@Grubermensch I get what you're saying, but on the other hand, I'm bad at both roleplaying and optimization. Being bad at one doesn't make me better at the other. Equally, I know people who are good at both.

BESW

Also I've found that it's an oversimplification to say that the time one has available to spend on RP prep is the same as the time one has available for mechanical prep. I can practice voices while I drive and I can crunch numbers while I eat lunch at the coffee shop, and those spaces can't accommodate the inverse activities.

a computing pun

Working on your character away from the table is (most of the time) an almost entirely mental thing; it's both an inherently creative process and one that doesn't require much in the way of props or references. You can do it on the bus or the train.

Grubermensch

05:27

@BESW That cuts both ways, though. A system like D&D where you can let roleplaying fall flat on the floor but the mechanics are extremely complicated biases toward prepping for mechanics. Fate has the opposite balance, and biases in the opposite way.

BESW

Regardless of any other truth or falsehood we can find by examining their themes and concepts, the claims of the Stormwind Fallacy are oversimplified false dichotomies.

Grubermensch

agreed

BESW

@Grubermensch I don't understand what you just said.

I mean, yes, the words and the ideas make sense.

But I don't get how it's a response to my statement.

a computing pun

Unless your ability to spend time on RPG-related matters (either optimisation or roleplaying) is actually limited by the amount of time you have available to you in your life (i.e, you literally have no free time that you're not spending on either optimisation or roleplaying), what you're actually being limited by is interest, or time-that-you're-willing-to-spend

@BESW (Also agreed!)

BESW

So... yeah. I don't think it's very useful to talk about the Stormwind Fallacy as an abstract claim because it's a poorly generalised statement that means drastically different things to different people depending on the personal context they bring to the ideas.

Grubermensch

05:30

@BESW In D&D the complexity of the system is in the mechanics, and the game does not particularly care about your roleplaying. Therefore, optimizing your mental process for the mechanics frees up more time to consider roleplaying in the moment of play.

BESW

It's more useful to talk about a specific case where a person is facing challenges of balancing mechanical and role-playing effort.

@Grubermensch Ahuh. That's... not what I'm talking about, though.

doppelgreener

@Grubermensch Aside, this seems to be contrary to any assertion that spending focus on mechanics comes at a cost to one's ability to roleplay well.

BESW

I'm saying that the more time I spent on the mechanics for a particular NPC, the more I was able to RP him effectively. That's almost the opposite of "freeing up" time from mechanical work.

Grubermensch

I think also we are starting to mix optimizing by constructing things and optimizing by training ones skills. i.e. building out a mathematically ideal collection of abiltiies vs. gaining system mastery

doppelgreener

@Grubermensch Well, you are the one bringing up time investment (in the message I am responding to), and asserting there is a trade-off between roleplaying ability and mechanical ability. BESW is saying that by doing one, he is also directly getting the other, meaning no trade off.

a computing pun

05:33

@Grubermensch I feel as though those are fairly mixed already. I primarily gain system mastery by playing with the system (e.g, by making theoretical characters).

Grubermensch

@doppelgreener In respect to my point just above, I was referring more to constructive optimization in my spectrum argument. Skills optimization is different.

a computing pun

And the process of working on one's current character (or designing an encounter as a DM, or whatever) trains system mastery inherently.

doppelgreener

@Grubermensch These "constructive" and "skills" optimization terms are distinctions I am not familiar with.

Adeptus

3 mins ago, by Grubermensch

I think also we are starting to mix optimizing by constructing things and optimizing by training ones skills. i.e. building out a mathematically ideal collection of abiltiies vs. gaining system mastery

doppelgreener

@Adeptus gaining system mastery is not optimization, so ????

optimization is what you do using system mastery.

I am developing system mastery of Fate, but I am not using it to do optimization.

Grubermensch

05:36

@doppelgreener So one way to think about prep (which I think is the more common reading) is to talk about aligning the stats of a character to better achieve some subset of goals. Another way is sort of what @BESW was talking about (e.g. training voices) which is to internalize the system to make better choices in the moment.

doppelgreener

@Grubermensch BESW's training voices is roleplay prep, not optimization.

He was referring to, say, practicing a French accent while in the car.

Grubermensch

Sorry, I should have said prep in all of those cases.

a computing pun

@Grubermensch What does "internalise the system" mean as optimisation, though? I mean, how does one do this as an activity?

Adeptus

@acomputingpun Eat the rulebook ;)

doppelgreener

Okay, none of this stuff just said is about optimization though.

Grubermensch

05:38

@doppelgreener Yeah I turned the words around in my head, sorry for that.

But my point about constructive prep versus skills prep stands.

a computing pun

@Grubermensch What is your point about constructive prep versus skills prep? What is skills prep and how is it meaningfully distinct from constructive prep?

Grubermensch

@acomputingpun This is what learning is. Internalizing a system of rules and assumptions.

Miniman

@Grubermensch Wait, do you mean specific vs general prep?

Grubermensch

@Miniman I guess you could describe them as specific and general, but that seems like it makes things less clear.

a computing pun

Sure, okay, but is time spent, say, reading the combat rules in detail really meaningfully different from time spent working out exactly what feat and skills to take when you level up? Do they consume different types of time?

Miniman

05:41

@Grubermensch At this point it seems clear that it's currently unclear to people.

BESW

Sitting there choosing feats and spells and skill ranks for an NPC meant also thinking about who the NPC was, what they valued, where they came from, and how they solved problems. So when the NPC hit the table and the [bleep] hit the [bloop], the process of choosing his mechanical traits meant I'd spent time in the NPC's head and could respond quickly and appropriately in-character to events and choices I would never in a million years have anticipated.

Could I have gotten into the NPC's head more deeply without mechanical prep "getting in the way?" Maybe, with a lot of practice, eventually, but to this day the mechanic-designing serves as an aid to the RP-thinking: mechanical choices are prompts to get me asking characterisation questions I wouldn't have asked myself otherwise.

Grubermensch

@acomputingpun Well, for one, you only have to do the first thing once (I hope), and you do the second thing anew each time a character is designed.

Miniman

So constructive prep would be preparing a character you are going to play at your next session, and skills prep would be randomly studying rulebooks with nothing particular in mind?

(As examples)

doppelgreener

@Miniman <- @Grubermensch Your point is definitely unclear to me at present.

a computing pun

@Grubermensch I... still don't really understand what the distinction you're drawing is. You said (initially) "I feel that we are starting to mix [skills prep and optimisation prep]". Okay, we're mixing them. ...so?

BESW

05:43

The mechanical work on a character (PC or NPC) improves my non-mechanical work on the characterisation by prompting me to ask questions I wouldn't otherwise ask. Take away the mechanical prep and my characterisation prep suffers. I've seen this happen in super-low-mechanical systems like Cthulhu Dark.

Grubermensch

@BESW This seems far more hybridized than what I would call strictly mechanical prep. I'd say you're prepping both things at the same time.

BESW

@Grubermensch And that's exactly my point.

a computing pun

Assuming your thesis that they are different activites, why does it matter to this discussion that that they are different activities?

BESW

I'm saying that the whole conversation is making assumptions about preparation dichotomies that don't make sense to me because they fly in the face of all my own experience.

doppelgreener

@acomputingpun I think Gruber is asserting that mechanical prep is supposed to come at a trade off with roleplay prep, i.e. you can't have both in equal measure, or doing one precludes being able to do the other better.

BESW

05:45

I trust that other people experience such dichotomies--no reason for them to lie about it--but generalisations which turn these experiences into universal statements about the nature of mechanical and RP prepwork are... meaningless to me.

a computing pun

@doppelgreener Yeah, but what does that have to do with skills vs. constructive prep (which seem to be, if I'm understanding this argument correctly, both subcategories of mechaical prep)?

doppelgreener

@acomputingpun this is where I got confused as well.

a computing pun

(whoops, just realised I'd been miswriting "constructive" as "optimisation" which probably made my previous posts very difficult to understand)

Grubermensch

@acomputingpun The skills-constructive and mechanics-rp are two independent axes (among others) categorizing an RP activity.

BESW

Since I can apparently do both at the same time, the discussion of one coming at the expense of the other is alien and bizarre. I've tried re-analysing my experience to fit into these neat two-hole concepts, but thus far I've failed.

doppelgreener

05:48

@Grubermensch Categorising these as axes does not seem meaningful.

Grubermensch

@BESW I'm coming around to your argument, it's kind of like a cross-training thing.

doppelgreener

Care to clarify what you mean by a cross-training thing?

BESW

@Grubermensch For me it's more like arguing that you can't swing your arms while running.

Like, yeah, I guess you could not do that, but they kinda go together and why wouldn't you and huh?

Grubermensch

@doppelgreener What I mean is: skills+mechanics: system mastery; skills+rp: improv technique; constructive+mechanics: ability selection; constructive+rp: backstory/sidestory

As examples

doppelgreener

I think this is a venn diagram where you're asserting developing both at once leads to development of something in particular.

Plotting it as an axis would be used with regards to picking points on that axis, for instance, and would also go and imply opposition + tradeoff which doesn't necessarily exist.

Grubermensch

05:52

@doppelgreener You have a round of mechanics prep, which then kicks off some notions of roleplaying prep, which then kicks off some mechanics notions. Similar to how professional athletes play different sports in the off-season to expose themselves to different ways of thinking about e.g. motion, forces, teamwork, etc

doppelgreener

@Grubermensch This is not my process and this does not seem to be BESW's process either.

Grubermensch

@doppelgreener I'm not asserting this. I'm just trying to talk about the different types of prep activities without tangling them all up in each other.

BESW

For us, they kinda are all tangled up.

a computing pun

@Grubermensch They're fundamentally tangled up.

BESW

Sorting them out, even analytically rather than procedurally, is nigh impossible for me.

Grubermensch

05:54

@acomputingpun But only in the same sense that literally everything we do is all tangled up in other things. It's a useful analytical technique to try and talk about things in isolation.

I assert that you are actually doing this in these sorts of stages (though the stages might be very quick--a minute or two spent on each side of the fence at a time)

BESW

@Grubermensch This is an analytical lens which can be useful in some situations, but the conversation at hand is about a claim that they are in practice and necessarily isolated, rather than isolatable in analysis after the fact.

doppelgreener

@Grubermensch Well I mean in terms of these equations you just expressed, it's better plotting those as venn diagrams with the overlapping points being 'system mastery', 'improv technique', etc. Stating they are axes would imply things that axes imply which those equations do not imply.

a computing pun

@Grubermensch Okay, but I thought we were talking about the assertion there's a finite amount of time that can be spent on either roleplaying activities or optimisation activities. The assertion that roleplaying activities and optimisation activities are fundamentally tangled up has direct relevance to that assertion - in that it suggests it to be false.

Grubermensch

@doppelgreener I don't follow this. Axes don't imply that they have a continuous range between them. You can have axes that are binary.

doppelgreener

@Grubermensch Ok, nevermind then.

Grubermensch

05:58

I also said above that I was coming around to @BESW's line of reasoning.

BESW

mmm. Even if we're jumping back and forth, the association is beneficial.

a computing pun

Regardless of whether it's analytically interesting to look at the activities in their theoretical untangled state, that's largely not how (in my experience, at least) they exist in practice.

BESW

Removing one element and focusing on the other is, for me at least, crippling to the remaining process.

What kind of game is Fate?

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