TRPG General Chat

Sandwich

00:46

Oh maaaaan

OOTS GETTING REAL NOW

I'm considering doing an epilogue at the start of my next session. Anyone have any experience with that and whether it's a good or bad idea?

@Sandwich SO REAL! 1500+ pages, 1000th strip, digital books and some very interesting upcoming strips from the looks of it :D

Sandwich

An Epilogue at the start?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

Well, they wiped when we concluded the last time.

Sandwich

Yes I remember that

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

So I want to do an epilogue of those characters before we roll new ones.

Sandwich

00:51

Epilogue is something you say at the end

Okay so you are completely starting a new thing then

doppelgreener

this is the end at the beginning apparently

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@Sandwich Pretty much yeah. I decided it was time. :P

So I've been thinking about doing an epilogue mainly so they know a bit about the events that unfolded after their actions to sort of tie up the story.

Sandwich

That's fine Will

Though they might be salty about it

But it was the result of their own actions

BESW

@Emrakul (or any other mod willing) [poke] Can I please get an unfreeze on the Spoil-Lair?

William 'MindWorX' Mariager

@Sandwich Indeed it was. And I'm not a fan of introducing a deus ex machina to save them from themselves.

Sandwich

00:55

That cheapens storytelling

Shalvenay

@Emrakul -- mind popping your head into the NAB?

Shalvenay

01:09

or @Pixie for that matter :)

Sandwich

NAB?

trogdor

Not A Bar

it does play one on TV though

Not a bar, but plays one on TV

I'm not a place to unwind after work, but I play one on TV.

1

Sandwich

Must be a pretty touchy subject for it to be in NAB

Pixie

01:25

Not necessarily. Sometimes it's just "oh, we're having a different conversation that's interrupting others, let's have that over there."

BESW

Nah, just that Shalv's RP history is complicated enough that taking about it in main chat gets... Messy... With folks who don't have the whole picture.

Shalvenay

@BESW -- yep. it is a touchy subject to a few folks, and it's also quite complicated

BESW

02:29

@doppelgreener, @trogdor, I'm using the Spoil-Lair as a dump for pictures I might put in my own influence map. You're welcome to look and comment and suggest if you want, right now it's just a brainstorm.

Starts here.

trogdor

ok, sounds nice

I forgot what the one that inspired Brother James was from

all the other ones I recognize

BESW

City of Lost Children.

doppelgreener

That was a wonderful movie.

BESW

It's a major influence for the aesthetic of Brother James and his cult.

doppelgreener

@Emrakul could I also have some fire magic?

BESW

02:34

I haven't yet figured out which Atomic Robo image(s) to use for my influence map, but they'll be there.

doppelgreener

this room hasn't been used for like 2/3rds of a year, wow.... that's some deep freeze.

Magician

02:53

5e Orcus.

So, question to people who actually play the system: how tough does he look?

Alternatively, how easy is it to get necrotic immunity?

Miniman

@Magician Pretty tough.

@Magician Resistance is easy, though.

BESW

03:14

BTW, @doppelgreener:

(source)

doppelgreener

@BESW how terrifying!

BESW

> If you're a gardener, kudzu is one of the great enemies (along with wisteria and bindweed and a few others) and you fight it back as if it were out of the D&D manual--sword and fire, poison and sweat.

Ooh, here's the photo that inspired my description of the Nibiru-1 Object.

That's an actual photo of a solar phenomenon (just a wacky solar flare) which flakey folks bandied around as an "invisible planet."

doppelgreener

oh wow.

that's cool :D

BESW

(I found it while researching Mayan/Nibiru conspiracy theories for ideas on how to start the campaign.)

From that, and the concept of the Nibiru Cataclysm, and Doctor Light's obsession with the Sun, the whole first volume plot just fell into my lap.

doppelgreener

and now the second arc sort of is falling into our laps as well :D

BESW

03:25

Heheh.

I just wanted to have a light-hearted one-shot with a time portal. Then Doctor Light went and got trapped in the pre-Cambrian and Myka had a breakdown blaming herself, and everything's snowballed after that.

doppelgreener

And after we get back from SPAAAAAAAAAAAAACE! the world will be changing, and magic stuff will be taking root in places.

BESW

Yes!

trogdor

lol

were you not planning to bring time portals back?

BESW

I was kinda planning to use them as an intermittent "Oh, random episode now" thing, and/or introduce a parallel ally/rival organisation dedicated to dealing with them.

doppelgreener

time travel doesn't seem to be so important - the most interesting stuff is here and now.

BESW

03:33

(One concept I'd been toying with was Amaterasu setting up a separate team to deal with Time Problems, and us occasionally joining them or playing PCs on that team.)

("Doctor Light, we need your team to rescue the Time Guys!")

doppelgreener

@BESW I think that is a splendid idea.

trogdor

is that just a drawing or is it supposed to be some kind of punk theme?

BESW

> Not really full steampunk, someone said it looked like regular wheatley with a bunch of brass bits stuck on. (source)

doppelgreener

i couldn't place it in a particular *-punk, but that seems to be a wonderful drawing with more of an early 1900s aesthetic.

it's got some art deco to it.

trogdor

@BESW I wasn't thinking steampunk really

not specifically anyway

I figured maybe solarpunk, because the only difference would probably be aesthetic anyway

BESW

03:44

Yeah, it's more nouveau, I think.

(And solarpunk is often nouveau.)

trogdor

I am well aware enough that you have to change more than this does to be real steampunk

BESW

Just Glue Some Gears On It (And Call It Steampunk)

►

doppelgreener

@BESW I never thought someone would've made a song about this! This reflects my thoughts XD

BESW

04:02

[hums] A copper-painted hunk/ Of some nineteen-eighties junk/ Will fetch a pretty penny on e-bay

Magician

BESW

Ben

05:10

So I played a Homebrew game last night: "Hargrove". This guy only does it once a year, at a certain time of the year, leading up to 12:00 12/12/12. Which is, in his mind, the day of the apocalypse. (He's still pissed it didn't happen :P)

He came up with the whole system, (based around the number 12) and it's all very impressive

BESW

@Ben He can take comfort that my campaign will duly destroy the world at that particular moment.

Ben

His will too ;)

And in my mind, it's a DM's dream: he never rolls any dice :)

Shalvenay

@BESW re kudzu -- you know how my druid would solve it? summon a goat. :D

Ben

The interesting thing is that, I believe he's actually based it off D&D.

BESW

Well, plenty of games don't have the GM roll dice.

A lot of games, actually, put the dice only in the hands of the players.

Right off the top of my head, Cthulhu Dark, Great Ork Gods, Lady Blackbird, Lasers & Feelings...

Ben

05:20

Well fair enough

Either way, it was really fun. Our group was a bunch of misfits; a 19 yr old Texan Barista (with a "questionable" sexual orientation - as he kept pointing out), a Mexican drug dealer, an Irish Brothel Mistress, and a Hagrid-looking bin man

BESW

Nice.

Ben

Unfortunately, the Barista didn't make it.

(Not sure if you can all tell, but I was very impressed by the whole thing) haha

BESW

Sounds fun.

How did the world end?

Ben

Not really sure. We were in the bank, when a bunch of guys came in and held up the bank. They got away, we were all left unharmed, and the cops were interviewing all the witnesses when the floor collapsed. Lots of noise and earthquakes and such, and we were trapped underground.

We managed to find our way into the sewers, where we were attacked by some kind of phantom beings...

Made our way out of there into some kind of storage facility, where a minotaur beast attacked us. I (the Garbage man - Sam) managed to take it out with a shotgun I found on one of the dead cops from the bank robbery. Felt very manly haha.

But by the end of it I was really wanting to get back top-side.

But that's where the session ended

Very intense

BESW

05:38

What strategies/techniques did he use to make it so intense?

Ben

@BESW Background music, he used a lot of sound effects, he was very descriptive too.

And there was a lot of suggestive looks when people wanted to do things... haha

Made them second guess every now and then.

trogdor

@BESW yes, quite

Ben

05:54

Miniman

@Ben Oof, been there.

Ben

Like, I can understand writing up the skeleton in pen ("STR:", "DEX:" etc, and maybe some of the unchangeable things like name etc, but yeah. Lol.

BESW

06:30

@doppelgreener, @trogdor, I think this is about perfect as a visual for how I imagine Amaterasu's everyday working:

trogdor

hee

doppelgreener

06:54

@BESW YEP.

trogdor

I don't expect it looks like that everywhere

just the places where people are allowed to know fish men exist

doppelgreener

Certainly; the public reception area (read: "pedestrian rebuffing and deflection department") is not like that.

BESW

...PRADD?

doppelgreener

Sure!

They are in general in charge of making sure Amaterasu is outwardly as boring and uninteresting as possible. They came up with the pen manufacturer front.

Shalvenay

@trogdor -- :P my employer wouldn't care if you were a blue fish person as long as you could communicate and get the job done

@trogdor -- sends the fish-person on the left to operating rules class

trogdor

07:06

yes, but I think a government agency would care

XD

BESW

At least until he gets his Special Needs Permission Request approved to waive the office's dress code and let him go shirtless.

Shalvenay

@BESW -- hi-vis fits on everybody!

(no exceptions either -- see and be seen is important when 143 ton railcars are roaming about)

@trogdor -- not the gov't agency we deal with!

trogdor

well I doubt that one is the one that deals regularly with fish people

Althis

sorry.

Bumped my keyboard.

So.

Did any of you require an anthropiscilogist?

trogdor

not that I know of

Althis

07:15

Dangit...

I knew I should have gone with medicine...

But NOOOOO!

Alex Mitan

Good morning everyone!

Althis

I had to follow my dream and study incredibly obscure topics of imaginary science.

Morning @AlexMitan.

BESW

[wave]

user61230

Hi!

Alex Mitan

Hellooo!

Today is the day that I stop stressing the [redacted] out

Z was right, if I'm so stressed out about things I like, how am I gonna be hit by projects that I don't care about

I'll have my first game this week, and it'll probably be fine

I found a good way to describe the symptom but I don't think it's appropriate for this chat

So I'll just say it would be akin to...GM azure sphering

[seriously, I don't know what the language level of this chat is]

user61230

07:20

Generally language for somewhat sensitive, but friendly, company.

user61230

As far as I've seen, not above the occasional swear, but irked by moderate frequency.

Alex Mitan

then yes, GM azure sphere syndrome

I kept getting hyped up about an upcoming game, built up my enthusiasm and got really excited about it, and when things were to happen... it would all get cut off, a friend would leave country or I would have an exam or someone got ill

Over MONTHS

BESW

Been there.

Alex Mitan

It doesn't help that this is my first actual game

BESW

Spent about a year with only trogdor in my group, and neither of us are very good at being a single player.

Alex Mitan

07:25

Really? That was your first experiences?

BESW

Not my first experience, but it was very frustrating.

I'd been running D&D games almost constantly for ~6 years, then found DFRPG and Fate just as my group disintegrated and left just me and Troggy.

Pixie

Ouch.

I can kind of relate. In my case, for a looong time, I always had some kind of RP going. I was in forum RP frequently, and my friends and I were also regularly bounced characters off one another via IM. Then the forums I RPed in changed, and adult life and gradual distance pulled my friends and I apart.

BESW

@Pixie yeeah. All of my "episodic campaign so people can just come whichever days they're available" is the result of slowly working out how to get a working group again.

doppelgreener

Dan and I are thrilled to be a part of it.

Pixie

Yeah... that's definitely a struggle I relate to as well. One issue I have is that while my current group is willing to try new things, it seems we always come back to Pathfinder modules. It's fine with me as I like Pathfinder well enough, but it's just not the best for this sort of thing.

I'm happy that I have this group, though. It is a great one.

I still miss freeform RP though, structured and casual. ;_;

Alex Mitan

07:40

@Pixie I'd be so intimidated, I get so self-conscious sometimes

I don't know, I'm so painfully new to this thing, no matter how much I almost compulsively read

Pixie

@AlexMitan I do, too. I still do, even though I've been doing it for more than a decade.

Alex Mitan

@BESW Hey, by the way, I found a game that's almost as light as RFS, based on Fate: walkingmind.evilhat.com/2014/09/18/729-introduction

I think you guys should give it a look

@Pixie This might sound weird, but I feel as if I'd be more comfortable RPing as a GM, at least at first

Pixie

@AlexMitan That's mostly what I do, except with my usual group that I play with now. I only GM very occasionally for it.

Alex Mitan

I don't know what it is about GM RP that makes me more comfy with it... maybe the fact that RP is not everything I'm doing, and so the players focus on the world more than me

Pixie

I'm not sure how much of that has been preference and how much of that has been necessity though. :P I was long "de facto GM" for friends because I was the one who was willing to do it, and if I couldn't find something I wanted to join, I'd just make something.

Alex Mitan

07:45

Which is a very nice way to say that I make large monsters to hide behind the legs of because I'm shy

Pixie

Hmm. For me it's a little harder (when it comes to tabletop) because there is a lot to manage and a lot of the experience is riding on me. I'm much more nervous about GMing tabletop than freeform.

I can see your perspective as well, though.

Alex Mitan

Also, inspiration pictures

Are you playing a d20 game?

Pathfinder as you said earlier?

Pixie

I'm glad you'll finally be getting to play, at any rate. I think you'll feel a little better after it's over.

@AlexMitan We will be soon. I'm not GMing it though.

Alex Mitan

Yeah, but you said there's a lot to manage when you GM.. do you usually GM Pathfinder?

Pixie

I GMed a bit of Fate for the group recently and will probably do a little more, but everyone (myself included) is excited about Pathfinder planning right now, so I've set it aside. And... I absolutely do not GM Pathfinder. I probably never will. xD

I GM freeform mainly, or at least have historically, when there were opportunities. For tabletop, I have much less GMing experience.

Alex Mitan

07:52

Meanwhile: "Does an “acid” Burning Hands still set things on fire?"
Wow.. the answer given is "yes"

@Pixie GMing freeform is such an alien concept to me, haha.. I'd look something like that up just because I'm so curious

BESW

@AlexMitan Welcome to the amazing world of strict mechanics-first rules reading.

Alex Mitan

@BESW It literally says ACID spray! H... I mean... What if you shot that Acid Burning Hand spell into a vat of... sodium bicarbonate?

Shalvenay

@AlexMitan -- it's a spray of IRFNA :P

Alex Mitan

It's so paradoxical, it says that "It only changes the damage type", but I recall that the damage type influenced the interactions: D&D cobwebs were immune to blunt damage, and vulnerable to fire and slashy damage... therefore the type of damage IS the material or nature of the action or spell

So it can't change the damage type to acid and still be fire... Oh god

BESW

Yes, but (in this rules paradigm) damage type is a mechanical concept that has specific iterated effects.

Alex Mitan

07:56

So firing an Acid Burning Hands into a cobweb...?

Nope, you know what, nope

BESW

Burning hands sets things on fire because the spell says it does, not because it deals fire damage.

The "things catch fire" spell effect is not a function of the damage type.

Alex Mitan

O...kay

BESW

(Compare fireball, which deals fire damage but does NOT set things on fire.)

Alex Mitan

"Johnbooptidoop's Infamous Water Spray: sets things on fire, 5d6 water damage"

BESW

Changing the damage type only changes effects that are directly tied to the damage type mechanics (such as which objects take double or half damage).

Alex Mitan

07:59

I find that specifying literally everything in descriptions is one of the reasons so many d20 questions are asked

BESW

Clearly, the acid (or water) is superheated.

@AlexMitan eeeyup.

Alex Mitan

I've never seen a "But it doesn't SAY whether or not things catch fire" question about Risus or Rfs or Fate

BESW

And are debated so vehemently, because different people have different ideas about where to draw the line on literal interpretation.

afk a bit

Pixie

@AlexMitan I don't know if I can confidently say that I'm good at GMing freeform, but I can say that I'm more comfortable doing it, for a variety of reasons. But, again -- I've been doing it more than 10 years. If you have any questions, I can... attempt to answer them. xD

Freeform is quite a diverse animal though.

Shalvenay

@AlexMitan -- I personally would rule that an acid-typed Burning Hands would be a strongly oxidizing acid

Alex Mitan

08:01

@BESW Sure, be sure to check out 729, I linked it because I know you're into both RFS and Fate

@Shalvenay So still not plasma, right? That's what I'd do too

@Pixie No matter how dumb they are? :P

Here's something relevant to me too... as a GM, what kind of notes do you take?

Pixie

@AlexMitan No matter!

Shalvenay

@AlexMitan -- a spray of pure HNO3 or HClO4 would easily make you wish it was the ordinary version of Burning Hands

Alex Mitan

@Shalvenay Hah, of course, but it couldn't set a forest on fire, right? I think that's the debated thingy there... as fire tends to often be

Pixie

I don't take a lot of notes. As a freeform GM, I generally play via forums. Everything is there for me to scan as needed. It only becomes a problem if the RP survives long enough to go too long, which is rare because of the nature of freeform forum games (namely: people disappear on you a lot). And for tabletop, I GM oneshots usually.

Alex Mitan

@Pixie Tabletop Freeform sounds so alien, again... it took me weeks just to get people to stop saying that they'd be meeting up at my place for board games

Do people mostly use first or third person in freeform?

Pixie

08:07

Mostly third person. I almost exclusively prefer it.

Alex Mitan

Tsch, I don't want to sound stupid, I don't even know how freeform even works, hah, I'm so used to tinkering and mechanics in general, even outside of RPGs

Do you have a link to one of your games or something?

Pixie

No worries! You don't sound stupid at all. If you've never done it or even really encountered it, how could I expect you to know a bunch about it? Hmm, let me see if I have anything...

Alex Mitan

Freeform RPers, or just people who go really far with just freeform in structured systems, strike me as these paragons of confidence and immersion...

Pixie

(It has likely been years now since I was truly able to do forum games, so a lot of it is also old and embarrassing.)

Alex Mitan

Do you ever get people either being really self-conscious or outright heckling it as "lame" or whatever?

Pixie

08:12

I've never been heckled for it 'cause it's something I do in spaces intended for RP. If people are there, they're there for RP (unless maybe they're trolls). People get self-conscious sometimes, certainly.

Shalvenay

@AlexMitan -- it'd need to be totally choked with underbrush for that to happen

compare igniting a freshly cut Christmas tree to one that's been sitting dead in the backyard for a month or three

Alex Mitan

@Shalvenay Hah, what I meant was the point is not "is acid worse than fire if you get hit in the face by it", but rather "would a fire be a problem after a mis(or not)-aimed acid spray", which it probably wouldn't be

even with the strongest acid you have very localised collateral damage

Shalvenay

@AlexMitan very true, although perchlorates can be frisky far past when you expect them to be

Alex Mitan

Because, and this is one of the reasons d20 kind of turned me off, spells shouldn't be just treated as "more powerful weird arrows", but things which change the environment and alter people's courses of action and can be used in all sorts of ways

If you got assaulted by someone in your own house and had to choose between a blast of fire and one of acid, I bet you'd go for the latter, if you even go for that

or an airship, whatever

Pixie

... was my last semi-successful forum game really 5 years ago? [depressed] I am going to see if I can find anything else. xD

Shalvenay

08:22

@AlexMitan -- depends on the house. I've lived in places where I'd laugh at someone who tried to use Burning Hands -- that's four stories of fully sprinklered fire-resistive construction for you though

Alex Mitan

@Shalvenay xD well.. depends on the setting

Shalvenay

@AlexMitan -- I'd say it depends on what types of construction you run into just about exclusively

Alex Mitan

But in my Fate campaign, I'm 90% sure I'll have airships and a dabbler in fire magic... I'm going to mess with that heavily if what I think will happen will happen

Shalvenay

trying to burn a log cabin down without a few flasks of oil is pretty futile compared to trying to burn down something built from 2x4s and bailing wire

(especially if it isn't properly sheetrocked)

Pixie

Airships and fire magic... oh my.

Shalvenay

08:25

@Pixie -- helium or hydrogen?

@AlexMitan -- re burning down a log cabin with Burning Hands

7

A: Would the 1st level Burning Hands wizard spell burn down a wooden house/inn?

There are some factors that play into this spell not really doing much to the construction types of typical small inns. The use of gypsum plaster to coat walls (both interior and exterior) was commonplace even in antiquity (going back to far before the Roman era), and thick plaster coats behave ...

Pixie

@Shalvenay That is an important question.

Alex Mitan

@Pixie Yep.. she was there on my very brief foray into D&D... I'd love to help them realise the paradigm shift that happens in narrative-based games, especially Fate... the closest video game equivalent to Fate RPG I can think of is Dark Messiah

@Shalvenay I was thinking more in magitech terms, but there's still wood, if not trees and grass even

Shalvenay

@AlexMitan -- heavy timber members form an insulating char under fire conditions that protects the inside from damage for a significant period of time; also, fresh trees as a rule just don't burn easily -- too wet! deadwood and other forest floor detritus is what typically catches alight first in a forest fire

yeah, that's a paradigm shift that bedevils me as well, but I suspect for somewhat different reasons...

Alex Mitan

I was quite inspired by a Deviantart picture yesterday

The border between "airship/boat that floats" and "chunk of earth with wings and turbines" could become quite blurred

Shalvenay

besides, you can build a perfectly-good fixed wing airframe out of wood

Alex Mitan

08:33

@Shalvenay I'll be subtle at first, but if she describes casting a particularly reckless fire spell while skirmishing someone on her own ship and misses... looks like some of the supplies are on fire and someone's going to have to put it out before it engulfs the ship!

I'd probably offer it as a compel too, with a fate point as a reward to her

Shalvenay

on the note of wooden flying things: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_Havilland_Mosquito

BESW

@AlexMitan Exactly.

Alex Mitan

@BESW And I could just technically add another enemy to the scene in the form of a fire... only it won't be too useful to throw more fire or daggers at it

Pixie

@AlexMitan Eh, I guess I don't really have a better example than this. It's not necessarily how I'd do things now, but it's still mine. The only more recent games I have with any activity are on a site that's temporarily down. x3

Alex Mitan

The other player's a total wild-card though, she's quite offbeat in real life, and with no expectations about RPGs other than "Alright, let's do it! It'll be fun! Can I play anything I want?"

@Pixie Hey, Gaia online... what times...

doppelgreener

08:40

Pixie

@AlexMitan That was my home for a long time. I never really have found anything to replace it, but the RP community there shifted over time and is not (or was not, last I checked) really suitable for me anymore.

Alex Mitan

Skynet has awoken, muster the resistance

@Pixie It's very interesting.. things which are normally handled by mechanics have to be established by social contract... "no godmoding", "no controlling others' characters", etc... in system games, you are unable to anyway, in here, you have to understand it all over again..

Pixie

@AlexMitan Yes, that is a big thing with freeform.

Alex Mitan

And I would imagine there's all sorts of things at work, what with people not trying to "master" or "min-max" anything

This is super interesting to me, thanks, @Pixie! :D

doppelgreener

@AlexMitan i just realised these are both other freeform problems fate solves :I

you can control other characters, to an extent, but you pay fate points in order to say what they do. and you can't godmode beyond what you have narrative permission for.

Pixie

08:49

@AlexMitan Welcome! It is... slightly embarrassing for me... but if it's enlightening, I'm glad. xD (I had a lot of fun in this game, but it's from forever ago and so forth.)

I should also note that this game isn't representative of the freeform community as a whole. It's representative of one type of freeform RP in one community, according to the preferences (at the time) of myself and the friend who co-ran it with me.

But there are certain things that you will encounter in a lot of settings, and the social contract having to mandate such things is one of them.

doppelgreener

(context for others: ever since the idea was put onto me, I've been noticing how Fate is effectively a game that's made for freeform, except it augments that freeform with some mechanics designed to be available to resolve common major problems in freeform games)

Alex Mitan

@Pixie Of course, @Pixie, just like with any RPG-type game ever.. one Fate game isn't representative of another, since as @doppelgreener said, Fate is very good as a freeform support in the first place

Don't be embarassed :)
It's really enlightening and pleasant

Pixie

I am always embarrassed. Of everything. Especially if I made it and it's older than 5 seconds.

Alex Mitan

By the way, @doppelgreener, the other day I was randomly looking around Wikipedia for Fate RPG

@Pixie That is exactly how I feel about any drawing or poetry I'm...*shudders*...responsible for

So I got from Fate RPG Wikipedia to the page for Fudge

first sentence?
"Fudge is a generic role-playing game system for use in freeform role-playing games.[1]"

Pixie

@AlexMitan I think this is common. xD

BESW

08:56

My exposure to free-form text RPGs is mostly through old Harry Potter games on LJ where folks used puppet accounts to blog as characters.

Alex Mitan

>for use in freeform RPGs

No wonder Fate is starting to be seen as that, Fudge was -intended- as that

BESW

Actually, a year or two ago I met one of the HP LJ RPG moderators in the Science Fiction & Fantasy chat and asked her a lot of questions.

Pixie

@BESW Ah yes, LJ RP. It has its own way of operating. I was never too into that style myself.

Nowadays I think a lot of it has transferred to Tumblr RP too.

BESW

Gorillaz - Feel Good Inc. (Remastered)

►

Alex Mitan

@BESW Precisely... I think the Slowboat was one of those Freudian things for me... as a kid, I was fascinated by it, and I was crazy about Gorillaz.. floating islands just became more and more of a thing for me afterward

doppelgreener

09:01

@AlexMitan It suddenly dawns on me I had no idea what Fudge really was about, other than it was the predecessor of Fate.

@AlexMitan Yeah, this makes a lot of sense.

Alex Mitan

@doppelgreener ...but Fate says it uses Fudge dice... and... Fudge...things

Fudge (role-playing game system)

Fudge is a generic role-playing game system for use in freeform role-playing games. The name "FUDGE" was once an acronym for Freeform Universal Donated (later, Do-it-yourself) Gaming Engine and, though the acronym has since been dropped, that phrase remains a good summation of the game's design goals. Fudge has been nominated for an Origins Award for Best Role-Playing Game System for the Deryni Role-Playing Game. Rather than being a rigidly pre-defined set of rules like d20 System or GURPS, Fudge offers a customizable toolkit for building the users' own specialized role-playing game system. Such...

doppelgreener

@AlexMitan Yeah. Fate is an implementation of Fudge.

I just don't know much about Fudge as its own thing.

And I didn't know Freeform was in its name for instance!

Alex Mitan

@doppelgreener Mhm... well Fudge is an EXTREME toolkit-like "game"

The way I got it, it's not more popular because it actually took a lot of effort to gather up all the parts to make it into a playable thing for YOU

Pixie

Oh yeah, freeform was in there, wasn't it? I've read the Fudge acronym before, but it's been a while. xD

Alex Mitan

It really didn't provide a setting or "quick-start" theme that Fate, and even moreso FAE does

doppelgreener

09:04

Fate, when it was still an acronym, stood for Fudge Adventures in Tabletop Entertainment.

(Now we are past the phase where every RPG title needs to be an acronym, and it's just Fate.)

Alex Mitan

I think I read a bunch of its SRD, and it really kind of felt like someone plopping a bag of circuitry in front of you and saying "Now make a computer and play"

BESW

@doppelgreener And later, Fantastic Adventures, etc.

Alex Mitan

I find there's a problem with the Questions layout of Stackexchange...

I don't think hidden questions should factor into how many question you see per page... I set it to "30 questions a page" and I still only see around 7, with the graceful reminder that I have a bunch of hidden tags that factor into the remaining 23

doppelgreener

@AlexMitan Yeah... this is because making pagination take into account users' ignored content is a tricky and resource-intensive problem.

BESW

I doubt this is intentional, but I think it's good that this means it's harder to pretend that my selected corner of the site is ALL the site.

It's a reminder that there's parts of the community I'm avoiding.

While it's okay that I'm ignoring bits of the site, I think it's valuable to be reminded I'm doing so.

Pixie

09:31

@AlexMitan That light game you posted (is 729 the title?) interests me. I think it needs the conflict system the post puzzles over to be satisfactory to me, but it's a good start.

Alex Mitan

09:58

@Pixie Sure, but it somehow seems more light than RFS and others, and if I knew about it earlier, I would've tried it with my younger cousins before they left... they were just too manic for the others, in my view, so I didn't suggest much

Also, it feels like Fate mechanics could do decently in this one

some free invokes as free dice here and there

maybe using challenges and contests from Fate directly

as in "First to 3 successes wins"

Maybe some interesting things could be done with a few d4s and d8s... a Create Advantage could grant you a d8 to use instead of a d6 some time, and "wounding" an enemy would make them have to use a d4

BESW

Going AFK for Geek Night. ttfn

Alex Mitan

See you! :D

Alex Mitan

11:44

http://gamestorming.com/games-for-design/brainwriting/

This could be interesting for a worldbuilding session...

Alex Mitan

14:06

I like the idea of "rich dice" in Fate/etc... instead of four identical dice being rolled, one or more are a different colour, and their own result says something separate about the action

doppelgreener

@AlexMitan I've seen this in DRYH and Cthulhu Dark. In DRYH you have several colour-coded dice pools: exhaustion, discipline, hope and madness (as BESW talks about here). You count successes, but also the highest roll says what dominates the exchange and may provoke mechanical effects. Madness forces you to fight or run, you may become more exhausted, etc.

Cthulhu Dark has three dice: one you roll if the thing you're doing is humanly possible, one if it's relevant to your profession, one if you're willing to risk your insanity to succeed. (If it's something occult or supernatural like "perform magic", your insanity die is usually going to be the only die you can roll.)

Alex Mitan

Hah, okay.. I wonder what'd be interesting, but unintrusive to add to dF

maybe to a horror campaign (allegedly a challenge to Fate) you can add insanity/bad stuff dF

doppelgreener

The insanity die has a different colour to the rest. If it's the highest result, your sanity is put at stake and you make an Insanity roll. When you make an insanity roll, something horrifying and terrifying has happened to provoke it, and you're either going to crack and go a little more insane, or you're going to hold it together. (You're not okay - you're just managing to hold it together.) And then you roleplay out the result of going more insane or holding it together.

Alex Mitan

Mhm... I'd love to theorise more about Fate, but I'm afraid I'm getting really close to complete hogwash

since I'm still kind of compulsively reading stuff in hope that my game on Tuesday-ish is going to go well

doppelgreener

You already have all the tools you need to help it go well, and stuffing more into your brain without being able to practice any of it in the meantime isn't necessarily going to help.

Most of all you're going to be unable to distinguish some of the bad advice from the good because you haven't played yet.

Alex Mitan

14:21

I'm so afraid that I won't be able to have the game go anywhere... I feel that it'll be either "ookay...so what do we do now, how do we tackle this apparently uncleansable issue" or "Roll against a difficulty of 10 to see if you tackle this apparently cleansable issue"

doppelgreener

Yeah well it's fine to have that fear on your first session. That is the time in which you be awkward with the mechanics, and you will be.

Alex Mitan

How so?

doppelgreener

You're not going to understand how to use them effectively because you've never used them before.

At least, not on an ingrained, gut-feeling level.

Alex Mitan

As in, when to use a challenge, when a contest is okay, etc

doppelgreener

Yeah, you are going to be awkward in figuring out how to apply them the best way.

Alex Mitan

14:25

Pff... I feel like I have no clue what to do

or where to start

or if worldbuilding's gonna go well

Especially if they are unexperienced players

doppelgreener

Yeah, that is what you're meant to be like on session 1.

Alex Mitan

I'm new at GMing, but it doesn't help that they are new at everything too

I don't even know how stuff should work, do we have a worldbuilding session, then a break for me to get my bearings, then actual play?

doppelgreener

Building the world and character creation tends to be most or all of the first session of a game of Fate.

(But it's not "before playing", it's part of play.)

Alex Mitan

Before them playing as characters, I meant

But we'll have a longer day of being together all day

So we can fit in as much play as we want, mostly

I keep switching from "Hah, it'll be alright, it's a fun thing between friends" and complete desperation and self-destructive thinking

doppelgreener

Generally you decide what kind of world you want to play in, then create characters. You will probably have some to and fro between both of them.

Alex Mitan

14:51

Think it's a good idea to, at first, ask them just what they'd like in the game, almost randomly so?

"Orcs! Airships! Fire magic! Investigation! Fear of the unknown! Origami come to life!"

doppelgreener

15:35

@AlexMitan Mmm, I can't confess to knowing a best way to do it, and there's probably lots of good ways.

Even when you eventually arrive at one setting, you might find you're all playing a different setting in your heads - our group is becoming aware of that and beginning to map it out. BESW's inspirations come from sources like City of Lost Children, X-Files, Hellboy, Warehouse 13, GRIM... my inspirations are coming from Avatar (the Last Airbender and Legend of Korra), Ghost in the Shell, heroic fantasy a la D&D 4th edition's setting, and others.

Alex Mitan

I like this idea of worldbuilding more and more... It's just that I don't know whether or not I have to have an impending doom right at the beginning because I feel it'll be either too direct or too unsurmountable... I think I kind of like more minor problems popping up in something of an open world at first, especially considering it might be more of a small, irregular game

doppelgreener

Each of us in the group will ideally eventually make an influence map, and then we can combine them together into one giant Inspiration Map for our whole game and draw upon it together as players and GMs.

Alex Mitan

Oh, that's sweet, have you done it like that before?

doppelgreener

First time, but it seems like exactly what we need.

@AlexMitan Have both. You don't need an impending doom but you're going to have an overarching plot, probably.

Alex Mitan

@doppelgreener Sure, sounds good... thing is, there's a LOT of people I'd like to play with by now...

I've been having GMAS (GM azure sphere) for months, more and more people found out about RPGs and have expressed interest in them

Especially my initial D&D group who seemed to really enjoy it AND who all go to colleges right next to mine, some actually being grade-mates

doppelgreener

15:44

What's GM azure sphere?

Alex Mitan

a nice term for what happens when you really want to be a GM, and things keep building up and getting exciting, and right in the mixed feelings of anticipating a game the plans drop, and you're left there, uncomfortably aching for an actual game

I found such an amazing thing

for Fate worldbuilding

it's called "A Spark in Fate Core"

seriously, you should totally read it, you, @BESW, @trogdor... honestly, it applies to any RPG but it works best for Fate

Not a bar, but plays one on TV

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